This award supports a study to develop an optimal telescope design for a new all-sky survey at 2.2 micrometers. The major scientific goals of the survey are to study the large scale distribution of galaxies and the large scale distribution of stars within our Galaxy, without the interference of galactic dust obscuration. The survey would cover the entire sky at least twice, with sensitivity sufficient to detect point sources with K magnitude brighter than 14; the data would begin to become publicly available within 1 year after survey operations end. The baseline system calls for a special-purpose 1-m telescope and 256 X 256 array detectors. The enormous increase in sensitivity of the proposed survey compared to previous surveys makes its outcome broadly relevant to many disciplines. This study will lead to a preferred approach for a telescope design, as well as realistic estimate of the cost and schedule required to build it.
