[ASA] SkyMapper to become a national facility

[Bryan Gaensler]

Dear colleagues,

ANU and CAASTRO are pleased to announce that ANU's SkyMapper telescope will be offered as a national facility over the period 2014-2019, with data available to the entire Australian community.

SkyMapper is a new automated optical wide-field survey telescope, located at Siding Spring Observatory (see http://rsaa.anu.edu.au/observatories/telescopes/skymapper-telescope). Approximately 75% of SkyMapper's observing time over the next 5 years is being dedicated to the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky. In addition to the main survey, a Shallow Survey will be undertaken in photometric conditions for calibration of stars from 9th to 16th magnitude in all bands. This will provide the photometric calibration for the main survey, and will tie this to Hipparchos, Tycho and other photometric standard systems.

As a national facility, the following capabilities will be offered to the Australian community:

- Astronomers at any Australian institution can join existing SkyMapper science collaborations, with the proviso that they take on a substantive role in the work associated with the program.

- Any Australian astronomer can propose a new SkyMapper science program, provided the proposed work does not duplicate any existing program.

- International collaborators can be included if the case is made that they can make valuable contributions to a research project.

- 20% of non-survey observing time on SkyMapper will be made available to the Australian community for other programs allocated through competitive peer review.

- Once data are ingested into the science data base, the resulting images, data products and catalogues will be made immediately available to all Australian astronomers. All users of SkyMapper data will be bound by the consortium’s publication policy. A full public release through the All-sky Virtual Observatory will follow within 18 months.

The guidance, oversight and management of national facility operations will be the responsibility of a "SkyMapper Executive", consisting of four scientists from ANU and three scientists from other Australian institutions. In the coming months, the SkyMapper Executive will develop the framework and details to underpin the above programs and modes of operation.

If you are interested in finding out more about SkyMapper and what it can do for your science, we encourage you to register for the upcoming workshop "SkyMapper: Everything you Need to Know to Use the Terabytes", to be held in Canberra over 7-9 April 2014 - see http://caastro.org/event/2014-skymapper for more information.

The national facility capability for SkyMapper has been funded through ARC LIEF grant LE130100104 from the Australian Research Council, awarded to CAASTRO, Monash University and the AAO. SkyMapper is owned and operated by ANU's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Matthew Colless, RSAA Director
Bryan Gaensler, CAASTRO Director