
A new kind of telescope that can photograph the whole sky simultaneously - nkurz
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528911/how-to-build-an-evryscope?
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kghose
It is, however, not clear to me what kind of useful information we can get
from the visible spectrum at this low magnification. At 85mm you can't even
make out features on the moon.

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nkurz
In the linked paper
([http://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0026v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0026v1.pdf))
they suggest that it will be useful for "extremely-wide-field transiting
exoplanet searches, realtime searches for transient and variable phenomena,
and ... the capability to effectively pre-image unexpected events detected by
other surveys". Based on the relative length of the descriptions, they seem
most interested in the exoplanet surveys.

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gammarator
This is right. The other science topics mentioned have longer timescales
(hours or days), so surveys with smaller fields of view but bigger light
collecting power are better at finding these events.

For exoplanet transits, though, you're interested in frequent time sampling to
catch and model the passage of the planet in front of the star, so sampling
all the bright stars in the sky every few minutes is a great way to do this.
It also explains the high Arctic observing site (lots of stars that never set
and can be observed for months at a time).

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kghose
Thanks for the explanations, guys!

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qwerta
This thing can photograph the whole sky in a few days in much better quality:

> VISTA is a 4-m class wide field survey telescope for the southern
> hemisphere, equipped with a near infrared camera (1.65 degree diameter field
> of view

[http://www.vista.ac.uk/](http://www.vista.ac.uk/)

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turnip1979
My first reaction when I saw the graphic was why does it needs an equatorial
mount + tracking hardware if it is whole sky?

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kgabis
Because it would allow only very short exposures otherwise.

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turnip1979
I would have thought software image processing could handle this.

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gfody
Should've called it clesthora's eye

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lcedp
Clesthyra that is.
[http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Clesthyra%27s_Eye](http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Clesthyra%27s_Eye)

