Abstract
A PROJECT of photographing the heavens has been announced by the National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., which is sponsoring the scheme, and by the Mt. Wilson–Palomar Observatories, which will carry out the programme, and will be known as the National Geographic Society–Palomar Observatory sky Survey. The main work will be done by the 48-in. Schmidt telescope on Mt. Palomar, and the photographs will be taken on July 19, weather perlnitting, on which night a ceremony will be held in the Schmidt dome. It is expected that the work will be completed in 1953, when three-quarters of the sky out to an average distance of 300 million light-years will have been photographed. Unusual phenomena recorded by the Schmidt telescope will be studied more intensively later by the “pin-pointing instrument of maximum penetration’ —the 200-in. giant at Palomar. Virtually identical exposures of each area will be made by using both blue and red filters to permit comparisons of the widely different pictures’ obtained in the different colours. When completed, the Survey will record about 500 million stars and perhaps 10 million extra-galactic nebulas. The ”Sky Atlas’ which includes this survey will be the equivalent of about twenty large volumes, and it is hoped that the Atlas can be produced at a cost of 2,000 dollars a copy. These will be supplied at cost price to observatories, astronomers, and higher educational institutions throughout the world “to advance the cause of human knowledge". The relatively low cost of production is due to the generous financial assistance rendered by the National Geographic Society. This Survey will prove invaluable as a research guide for the great observatories and will also be an immense boon for the smaller observatories, and for astronomers engaged hi theoretical studies, who will be able to use the Survey photographs without recourse to their own telescopic observations. It is believed that the results will be an astronomical bible for at least a century to come.
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Sky Survey by the Schmidt Telescope at Palomar. Nature 164, 97 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164097a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164097a0