Graduate Student Participation and CCD Procurement for the Original PolyOculus Array

研究生参与和原始 PolyOculus 阵列的 CCD 采购

• 批准号: 2205692
• 负责人: Stephen Eikenberry
• 金额: $ 17.34万
• 依托单位: The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2205692&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Graduate; Student; Participation; CCD; Procurement

This project continues development of a new telescope configuration that is referred to as PolyOculus, which enables large telescope arrays at significantly lower cost. This allows smaller universities and colleges with limited budgets to engage in forefront research. The system uses small amateur telescopes to create robotic light collectors. These units are pointed at the same target and the light is fed into custom fiber optic cables. A photonic lantern is used to combine the light from the parallel fibers. Light can be further combined again with other similar units to make even bigger telescopes. The PolyOculus system would serve as a pathfinder for studies of targets identified by the Vera Rubin Observatory, to study the nature of Dark Energy and search for Earth-like planets. Follow-up spectroscopy is scientifically important for identifying the basic nature of new sources that are being discovered by time series observation of the night sky (e.g. supernovae, flare stars, tidal disruption events, or new classes of objects), for determining the key physical properties of these events(temperature, composition, radial velocity, outflows, etc.) and to follow the evolution of those properties with time. Traditional large spectroscopic facilities are expensive to construct. This project will develop a method for producing large-area-equivalent telescopes by using photonic technology to link multiple semi-autonomous, small, inexpensive, commercial-off-the-shelf telescopes. Crucially, this scalable design has construction costs which are substantially lower than equivalent traditional large-area telescopes. This project’s innovative array approach represents a new approach to obtaining spectroscopic follow-up for time-domain astronomy. Two graduate students will be engaged in the deployment and commissioning of the instrument at the Mount Laguna Observatory.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目继续开发一种称为 PolyOculus 的新望远镜配置，它能够以显着降低的成本实现大型望远镜阵列，这使得预算有限的小型大学和学院能够使用小型业余望远镜来创建机器人。这些单元指向同一个目标，光被输入定制的光纤电缆，用于组合来自平行光纤的光，可以进一步与其他类似的单元组合，以产生更大的光。 PolyOculus 系统将充当维拉鲁宾天文台确定的目标研究的探路者，以研究暗能量的性质并寻找类地行星，这对于识别新行星的基本性质具有重要的科学意义。通过夜空时间序列观测发现的源（例如超新星、耀星、潮汐破坏事件或新类别的天体），用于确定这些事件的关键物理特性（温度、成分、径向速度、流出量等）并跟踪这些特性随时间的演变。该项目将开发一种通过使用光子技术连接多个半望远镜来生产大面积等效望远镜的方法。 - 自主、小型、廉价、现成的商用望远镜，这种可扩展的设计的建造成本大大低于该项目的创新阵列方法。代表了一种获得时域天文学光谱跟踪的新方法，两名研究生将参与拉古纳山天文台仪器的部署和调试。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并被认为值得通过以下方式获得支持。使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。