The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (Conference Presentation)

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large aperture, wide-field, ground-based telescope designed to provide a time domain survey of the entire southern hemisphere in six optical bands. Over the ten-year duration of the survey, LSST will obtain ~800-1,000 images of every part of the southern sky, yielding a catalog of stars, galaxies, and moving small bodies in the solar system with nearly 40 billion objects. A diverse array of scientific investigations can be performed with a common database addressing topics ranging from the detection of potentially hazardous asteroids to the structure and evolution of the Universe as a whole. LSST incorporates an 8-m class primary mirror with a 3.2 billion pixel camera. I will discuss the design of this facility and our technical progress with construction and fabrication of the key components.