A Reliable, Robust, Robotic One Meter Telescope for Research and Graduate/Undergraduate Student Training

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal: 0519398 Principal Investigator: Thomas Harrison Title: A Reliable, Robust, Robotic One-Meter Telescope for Research and Graduate/Undergraduate Student Training ABSTRACT: New Mexico State University owns and operates a one-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory (APO) in southern New Mexico. This telescope is fully robotic and scientifically active, monitoring the light curves of cataclysmic variables, brown dwarfs, and supernovae discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The telescope is in need of refurbishment. As a result, its operation will be made more reliable and new instrumentation and capabilities will be made available. Work packages that will be undertaken will: (1) Improve the usage to greater than 90% of all clear nights, through increased manpower (including the use of a graduate student to share primary responsibility for operations), improvements to some critical under-engineered subsystems, and the purchase of basic spare parts. (2) Integrate a new, existing, 2048x2048 CCD (built in collaboration with Los Alamos National Labs) into the telescope to allow wider-field operation with a detector with sufficiently low dark current to allow for narrow-band imaging, and to replace our current tiny guide camera with a new CCD camera. (3) Improve performance via improvements in optical alignment and improved guiding software. (4) Improve optical performance and allow for simultaneously mounting a second instrument by constructing a new rotating tertiary with actuated control of rotation, translation, tip, and tilt. (5) Construct a high-speed photometer for the second Nasmyth port to allow high time-resolution photometry simultaneously in five colors. The renovated telescope will be used for a number of research projects, including programs in narrow-band imaging, rapid-response follow-up to high energy transits (including those from SWIFT), monitoring of known extrasolar planet systems for transits, searches for periodic and quasi-periodic variability in interacting binaries, pulsating white dwarfs, and the optical counterparts of high-energy transients, etc. Up to 20% of the telescope time available to the community through queue scheduled observations, including the possibility of target-of-opportunity observations, through an internally review program. Additional time will be made available for external scientists who propose projects in collaboration with NMSU personnel. The renovation efforts will provide graduate and undergraduate students with both engineering and research opportunities, including instrument design and deployment, as well as software development. Use of the telescope will be more reliably integrated into existing astronomy classes and the 1-m will be incorporated into an on-campus program aimed at under-represented middle and high school students in science. This award is funded by the Division of Astronomical Sciences and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities.