Astronomical survey in the context of "List of minor planet discoverers"

24°36′57″S 70°23′28″W / 24.61583°S 70.39111°W / -24.61583; -70.39111

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km from the VISTA Survey Telescope. Science operations began in early 2015. The astronomical survey is managed by a consortium of seven European universities and other academic institutions from Chile, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Prototypes of the array were tested in 2009 and 2010 on La Palma, and from 2012 to 2014 at Geneva Observatory.

The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) was an astronomical survey of the whole sky in infrared light. It took place between 1997 and 2001, in two different locations: at the U.S. Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, each using a 1.3-meter telescope for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively. It was conducted in the short-wavelength infrared at three distinct frequency bands (J, H, and K) near 2 micrometres, from which the photometric survey with its HgCdTe detectors derives its name.

2MASS produced an astronomical catalog with over 300 million observed objects, including minor planets of the Solar System, brown dwarfs, low-mass stars, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. In addition, 1 million objects were cataloged in the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (2MASX). The cataloged objects are designated with a "2MASS" and "2MASX" prefix, respectively.

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and MIDEX-6) was a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program launched in December 2009. WISE discovered thousands of minor planets and numerous star clusters. Its observations also supported the discovery of the first Y-type brown dwarf and Earth trojan asteroid.WISE performed an all-sky astronomical survey with images in 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 μm wavelength range bands, over ten months using a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope in Earth orbit.

After its solid hydrogen coolant depleted, it was placed in hibernation mode in February 2011.In 2013, NASA reactivated the WISE telescope to search for near-Earth objects (NEO), such as comets and asteroids, that could collide with Earth.

A space telescope (also known as space observatory) is a telescope in outer space used to observe astronomical objects. Suggested by Lyman Spitzer in 1946, the first operational telescopes were the American Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO-2 launched in 1968, and the Soviet Orion 1 ultraviolet telescope aboard space station Salyut 1 in 1971. Space telescopes avoid several problems caused by the atmosphere, including the absorption or scattering of certain wavelengths of light, obstruction by clouds, and distortions due to atmospheric refraction such as twinkling. Space telescopes can also observe dim objects during the daytime, and they avoid light pollution which ground-based observatories encounter. They are divided into two types: Satellites which map the entire sky (astronomical survey), and satellites which focus on selected astronomical objects or parts of the sky and beyond. Space telescopes are distinct from Earth imaging satellites, which point toward Earth for satellite imaging, applied for weather analysis, espionage, and other types of information gathering.

In cosmology, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter (normal matter) of the universe, caused by acoustic density waves in the primordial plasma of the early universe. In the same way that supernovae provide a "standard candle" for astronomical observations, BAO matter clustering provides a "standard ruler" for length scale in cosmology. The length of this standard ruler is given by the maximum distance the acoustic waves could travel in the primordial plasma before the plasma cooled to the point where it became neutral atoms (the epoch of recombination), which stopped the expansion of the plasma density waves, "freezing" them into place. The length of this standard ruler (≈490 million light years in today's universe) can be measured by looking at the large scale structure of matter using astronomical surveys. BAO measurements help cosmologists understand more about the nature of dark energy (which causes the accelerating expansion of the universe) by constraining cosmological parameters.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a scientific research instrument for conducting spectrographic astronomical surveys of distant galaxies. Its main components are a focal plane containing 5,000 fiber-positioning robots, and a bank of spectrographs which are fed by the fibers. The instrument enables an experiment to probe the expansion history of the universe and the mysterious physics of dark energy. The main DESI survey started in May 2021. DESI sits at an elevation of 6,880 feet (2,100 m), where it has been retrofitted onto the Mayall Telescope on top of Kitt Peak in the Sonoran Desert, which is located 55 miles (89 km) from Tucson, Arizona, US.

The instrument is operated by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under funding from the US Department of Energy's Office of Science. Construction of the instrument was principally funded by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science, and by other numerous sources including the US National Science Foundation, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology, Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation, by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, by the Heising-Simons Foundation, and by collaborating institutions worldwide.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory in Coquimbo Region, Chile. Its main task is to conduct an astronomical survey of the southern sky every few nights, creating a ten-year time-lapse record, termed the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (also abbreviated LSST). The observatory is located on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón, a 2,682-meter-high (8,799 ft) mountain in northern Chile, alongside the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes. The base facility is located about 100 kilometres (62 miles) away from the observatory by road, in La Serena.

The observatory is named for Vera Rubin, an American astronomer who pioneered discoveries about galactic rotation rates. It is a joint initiative of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science and is operated jointly by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.