Support for the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope Facility

Association Of Universities For Research In Astronomy, Inc., Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) will operate and maintain the WIYN 3.5-m telescope located near Tucson, Arizona, during the FY16 through FY18 period to enable the following three key activities: (a) approximately 270 nights for scientific research related to the study of planets orbiting other stars (so-called exoplanets) and their host stars, within the framework of the joint NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research (NN-EXPLORE) program; (b) FY18 installation of the Extreme Precision Doppler Spectrometer (EPDS), to be used to determine the masses of exoplanets discovered by NASA space missions such as Kepler and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS); and (c) essential corrective and preventive technical maintenance as well as minor technology upgrades as needed for the WIYN facility and its instrumentation. KPNO operates and maintains WIYN on behalf of the WIYN partnership, whose equity members are the U. of Wisconsin, Indiana U., and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), joined by operational partner U. of Missouri-Columbia. KPNO is a unit of NOAO, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF). Intellectual Merit: It is now well established that many stellar systems in our Milky Way host one or more exoplanets. The mix of host stellar system properties (single vs. multiple stars, stellar chemical composition and temperature, etc.) and exoplanet system properties (e.g., number of exoplanets per star, relative arrangements within each system, exoplanet composition) is astonishing and largely unanticipated. Before the origins of that mix can be understood, the nature of the exoplanets and their host stars must be understood. The current observational goal is to classify exoplanets as gas-dominated (like Neptune), ice-dominated, or rock-dominated (like Earth) and then compare those classifications to measured stellar properties. Surely, they must be tightly connected since the stellar and exoplanet systems formed from the same cloud of atomic and molecular gas. During the period of this program, WIYN will be used primarily to study the properties of exoplanet host stars. After EPDS is installed, WIYN will be used to measure exoplanet mass, which is required to determine if an exoplanet is primarily gaseous, icy, or rocky. Research enabled by this program will strengthen the foundations for identifying and characterizing Earth-like exoplanets in the nearby cosmos. Broader Impacts: Open access for enquiry-based research via peer review and open data for all will allow scientists and citizens to engage in the NOAO/WIYN research enterprise no matter who they are or where they work. The EPDS story, its technology as well as its measures of exoplanet mass and what we learn from that, will be a central public engagement opportunity at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center, which receives more than 40,000 visitors per year. The EPDS project brings together two federal agencies, three US federal research centers, and several US universities as well as highly specialized industrial partners. Many participants are early career scientists, some as early as undergraduate. In turn, the EPDS project will transform the WIYN into one of the premier radial velocity survey facilities in the world.