SkyMapper and the Southern Sky Survey

The SkyMapper telescope is conducting the Southern Sky Survey, the first digital imaging survey of the entire southern hemisphere sky. It will generate an information database from a billion stellar and galaxy images, a vital resource for many prominent science programs of international significance, from the Solar System to the edge of the Universe. In the time frame of the proposal we will provide the first public release of survey data, enabling its exploitation by the entire astronomy community both nationally and internationally. The proposal seeks resources to progress the survey and to use it to discover the oldest and most metal-poor stars in our Galaxy, and to understand the formation of the Galactic halo and the Magellanic Clouds.