Enhancing and Enlarging the Scientific Impact of the SARA Observatories

增强和扩大 SARA 天文台的科学影响

• 批准号: 0922981
• 负责人: Richard Ignace
• 金额: $ 38.21万
• 依托单位: East Tennessee State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0922981&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Enhancing; Enlarging; Scientific; Impact; SARA

Relatively few small colleges in the United States can provide regular access to research grade telescopes for faculty members to conduct research and for their students to gain training with telescope operations and conduct their first scientific research projects. A number of schools in the southeast U.S., however, pooled their resources and have taken over the operation of two telescopes. The Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) operates a telescope on Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and another one on Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The National Optical Astronomy Observatories turned over the northern hemisphere telescope to SARA and operations there began in 1993. More recently, the consortium was able to acquire the southern hemisphere telescope that is scheduled to become operational in summer 2009. In order to do productive research, however, the telescopes require instruments: modern cameras to take high quality pictures of celestial objects and spectrographs to analyze the light from stars. Dr. Richard Igance from East Tennessee State University is coordinating an effort to replace the outmoded and unreliable instruments on the older telescope and to outfit the newer telescope with matching instrumentation at the same time. The funds for this come from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program. The newly instrumented telescopes will be used by SARA faculty members to conduct astronomical research and to train their students to use the telescopes and conduct research projects.

在美国，相对较少的小型学院能够定期提供研究级望远镜，供教职员工进行研究，并让学生获得望远镜操作培训和进行他们的第一个科学研究项目。美国东南部的一些学校，但是，他们集中了资源，接管了两台望远镜的运作。东南天文学研究协会在亚利桑那州基特峰国家天文台和智利托洛洛山美洲天文台各有一台望远镜。 国家光学天文台将北方半球望远镜移交给SARA，并于1993年开始在那里运行。 最近，该财团获得了南半球望远镜，计划于2009年夏季投入使用。然而，为了进行富有成效的研究，望远镜需要仪器：现代相机拍摄天体的高质量照片和光谱仪分析恒星的光线。 来自东田纳西州立大学的理查德·伊甘斯博士正在协调一项努力，以更换旧望远镜上过时和不可靠的仪器，并同时为新望远镜配备匹配的仪器。 这项研究的资金来自国家科学基金会的主要研究仪器（MRI）计划。 SARA教职员工将使用这些新仪器望远镜进行天文研究，并培训学生使用望远镜和开展研究项目。