News
June 2023: Surveying the sky
Thanks to it's large field of view, LAST will be able to observe the entire visible sky every night. In a testrun in June 2023 we used four mounts to survey most of the visible sky in two nights. We took 20 20s images for each position and we reach a limiting magnitude of 21 when observing near zenith.
Mar 2023: 20 new LAST telescopes installed
On Mar 21-22, 2023, 20 new telescopes were added to LAST. LAST now consists of 32 telescopes. All the telescopes were tested successfully, polar aligned and calibrated.
Jan 2023: LAST observed the Near Earth Asteroid 2023BU
On Jan 26-27, 2023, LAST observed the Near Earth Asteroid 2023BU that passed within 10,000 km from the Earth center. As part of the commissioning and pipeline tests, LAST observed the asteroid using several telescopes. More Sun light is reflected by the larger side of the astroid and therefore it looks brighter. The figure shows a small section of the asteroid light curve and we calculate the rotation period using the luminosity variations.
September 2022: LAST observes the DART mission impact
On September 26, 2022, LAST observed the impact of the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft with the asteroid Dimorphos, minor-planet moon that circles around the asteroid Didymos.
The animation combines hundreds of images from different LAST telescopes and shows how a dust cloud expands in the first hour after the collision.
Stay tuned for our publication!
March 2022: Enclosure construction and 12 LAST telescopes deployed
On March 3rd, 2022, the first 12 telescopes of LAST were deployed.