U.S.-Venezuela Cooperative Research: Feasibility Study of aCCD Drift Scan Camera for the Venezuelan 1.0M Schmidt Telescope

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9628045 Sofia This Americas Program award will support Drs. Sabatino Sofia and three other astronomers from Yale University, Connecticut, to study the technical feasibility of mounting a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) drift scan camera on the 1m Schmidt telescope in Venezuela operated by the Centro de Investigacion de Astronomia (CIDA) at Llano del Hato, Venezuela. Collaborating with the group will be Dr. Gustavo Bruzual, Director of CIDA and his partners. The combination of Schmidt optics, the equatorial site provided by the Venezuelan Schmidt, and CCD drift scan techniques, should result in an uniquely powerful astronomical survey machine. Potential scientific applications which will be made possible by the CCD camera will cover the entire range of modern observational astrophysics, from searches for nearby brown dwarfs, to studies of the structure of our galaxy, to the cosmological implications of the distribution of the most distant quasars. Several technical issues must be resolved prior to the installation of the CCD. In particular, the geometry required by the camera on the telescope, and the algorithms for handling the large expected data rates must be considered. The objective of this proposal is to conduct the necessary studies to resolve these issues. ***