The MDW hydrogen-alpha (Hα) Sky Survey is aimed to generate deep, high-resolution Hα images of the entire sky. The instruments used are custom-modified Astro-Physics 130 mm f6.3 refractors featuring a 0.72x quad telecompressore with FLI ProLine 16803 CCD camera and 3-nm Astrodon hydrogen-alpha filter.
The survey was founded by three New England-based friends and astrophotographers - David Mittelman, Dennis di Cicco, and Sean Walker (MDW) -with support from the Michele and David Mittelman Family Foundation. Click here to learn more about the survey and its origins.
The survey operates out of the Mittelman Observatory in New Mexico, and recently started observing the southern hemisphere at the ObsTech Observatorio El Sauce, located in the Río Hurtado Valley in Chile.
The survey consists of 4116 fields spanning the entire sky, each approximately 3.6 by
3.6 degrees in dimension.
The detailed status and position can be found in the map above and in the table in the Images
tab.
For each field, there are 12 individual 20-minute exposures with 4k resolution and
3.17 arcseconds per pixel
Any publication using data from the MDW Sky Survey should include the following text:
Funding for the MDW Survey Project has been provided by the Michele and David Mittelman Family Foundation. David H. Sliski is the Project Director for the MDW Sky Survey and is responsible for evolving the project from an amateur sky survey into a legacy project to honor the founders. David R. Mittelman, Dennis di Cicco, and Sean Walker are founding members of the survey and made possible the acquisition and reduction of the data. The Columbia University Astronomy Department is responsible for the final data reduction, calibration, and dissemination of the survey data.