SkyMapper is a state-of-the-art automated wide-field survey telescope that represents a new vehicle for scientific discovery.

It is sited under the dark skies of Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, in central NSW. SkyMapper's mission is to robotically create the first comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky.

The result will be a massively detailed record of more than a billion stars and galaxies, to a sensitivity one million times fainter than the human eye can see.

The survey's data set will be made freely available to the scientific and general community via the internet.