Stellar Occultations in the 1990s: Portable, High-Speed, CCD Photometers

20 世纪 90 年代的恒星掩星：便携式、高速、CCD 光度计

• 批准号: 9120099
• 负责人: James Elliot
• 金额: $ 5.18万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1992
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1992-03-01 至 1994-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9120099&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Stellar; Occultations; 1990s; Portable; Speed

This award will be used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a new generation of photometers based on Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) for use in observing occultations of stars by objects in the Solar System. When compared with conventional high-speed photometers that use photomultipliers, a CCD-based photometer provides much greater quantum efficiency over a broader wavelength range, the ability to guide the telescope directly from the CCD image, and the ability to construct a much smaller synthetic photometric aperture after the fact that tracks image motion and can be optimized for changing seeing conditions. As a result, the CCD-based photometer provides a substantially greater signal-to-noise ratio than the traditional photometer for a given event, and it allows useful observations of the more numerous events involving fainter stars to be made. The high-speed CCD photometer must be portable in order to be used with a portable telescope or a fixed telescope that happens to lie within an occultation path.

该奖项将用于麻省理工学院开发基于电荷耦合器件(CCD)的新一代光度计，用于观测太阳系物体对恒星的掩星。与使用光电倍增管的传统高速光度计相比，基于CCD的光度计在更宽的波长范围内提供了更高的量子效率，能够直接从CCD图像引导望远镜，并且能够在跟踪图像运动并可以针对变化的视觉条件进行优化后构建一个小得多的合成光度学孔径。因此，对于给定的事件，基于CCD的光度计提供了比传统光度计高得多的信噪比，并且它允许对涉及较暗恒星的更多事件进行有用的观测。高速CCD光度计必须是便携式的，才能与便携式望远镜或恰好位于掩星路径内的固定望远镜一起使用。