Only one hit in PASP (Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) for Feb (vol. 137 #2), but what a paper:
Lu, J-Q. Fan, L-L. Cai, M-X. et al. Search Capability for Near-Earth Objects with the Wide-Field Survey Telescope art. 024401 adac8f
Dismiss Chinese science and tech if you feel… they’ll keep working at it all the same. The coming Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) at Lenghu may seem dwarfed by the coming Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO), but take a closer look. True, WFST’s aperture is “just” 2.5 meters, while the Simonyi telescope at VRO is over 8 meters. But Vera Rubin is in the Southern Hemisphere, WFST is Northern; the two search patterns (as given so far) will not overlap that much, near the equator. Also, there is a longitude difference, and not a small one, either. Objects which pass into morning for Vera Rubin will pass into evening for WFST, and vice-versa… assuming they’re in the tropical overlap belt, that is. WFST then claims (justifiably) it will be the most powerful surveying telescope in the Northern Hemisphere.
And let’s not scoff at a 2.5 meter aperture, either. Around the world, most asteroid search telescopes are, at most, one meter in aperture, usually less. Pan-STARRS is exceptional at 1.8 meters. WFST, then, at 2.5 m will be roughly double the collecting area as a Pan-STARRS. (Meanwhile Pan-STARRS too is at a longitude far away from WFST.) Let’s not view WFST as a sort of competition; the more people looking out for asteroids/comets the better, and certainly from more longitudes. Glass is good.
Of course, that’s assuming one is looking out for asteroids/comets. In the case of Pan-STARRS, the hunt for supernovas has largely run its course; their search parameters are now pretty much tuned for small-body detection and follow-up. That’s not the case for WFST, nor VRO. Vera Rubin is co-funded by both NASA and the Department of Energy. The DoE side is paying for dark matter research, which may uncover new physics. However, this means there’s a tension between a search optimized for dark-matter, and a planetary defense sweep. To some extent, all parties seem to be playing nicely, especially since the use of lensing and shear as dark matter indications doesn’t have real time constraints. Only supernovas as probes of the universe need rapid-response telescope queueing.
Not so for WFST. Going by this paper, the supernova/gravity-wave/misc. researchers have the helm. Searching for dangerous or curious asteroids will be serendipitous; the telescope will image the sky as it will, and it’s up to asteroid-specific workers to sift through the pixels and find solar system objects that just happened to get caught. How, then, might we influence the WFST queue to benefit all? What metrics indicate better asteroid catching? Lu et al. study this. Given ‘the most powerful surveying telescope’ but with constrained pointing (and re-pointing… gotta follow up on an initial hit), there are a few details of the queueing/scheduling that could really benefit asteroid detection. Lu. et al start with the assumed Near-Earth Object population, then work down the chain until a detection can be reported to the MPC.
More glass, more good- and WFST is a lot of glass. Eyes on the skies, folks!