U.S.-Venezuela Cooperative Research: Long-Term AstronomicalSurveys Using Electronic Detectors on a Wide-Field Telescope

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This award will support Drs. David Chih-yuen Koo, Joseph S. Miller, and Lloyd B. Robinson of the University of California Lick Observatory in a research collaboration with Dr. Gustavo Bruzual of the Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomia (CIDA) in Merida, Venezuela. The purpose of the collaboration is to establish a long-term joint program involving two parts: the first involves travel and data-transfer support for a pilot instrumentation project to develop a large-format electronic (CCD) camera for use on the new CIDA 1-meter Schmidt telescope. Lick and CIDA astronomers will then use this powerful combination to undertake various extensive new photometric and synoptic surveys of joint scientific interest. One of these will be a major new long-term observational survey of 20 areas in the sky. Among many potential programs using these data will be a multicolor photometric survey to study the luminosity function of galaxies and a synoptic program to search for very distant supernovae. The second part of the collaboration will attempt to develop new quantitative methods of analyzing extensive multidimensional data, aimed mainly at exploring the evolution of galaxies and cosmology. Major observational surveys are some of the most productive astronomical tools to understand the universe. Such surveys allow astronomers to measure distributions of properties of known objects and also to discover new, rare, or unusual classes of objects. Despite their importance, photometric surveys that cover large areas, synoptic programs, or any long-term projects are all particularly difficult to undertake in today's climate of scarce telescope time. The CIDA observatory in Venezuela has recently finished the construction of a 1-meter Schmidt telescope that has overall optical properties similar to the one at Palomar and is the among the three largest in the northern hemisphere. The collaborators' plan to develop imaging cameras for the telescope at CIDA using charge coupled detectors (CCDs) of very large format developed at the Detector Laboratory at Lick, plus the ability of CIDA to provide dedicated observers time for long-term surveys should allow astronomers to undertake a variety of new surveys of unprecedented depth, time and areal coverage.