Enhancing and Enlarging the Scientific Impact of the SARA Observatories

增强和扩大 SARA 天文台的科学影响

基本信息

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

项目摘要

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，相对较少的小型大学可以定期使用研究级望远镜，以便教师进行研究及其学生接受望远镜操作的培训并进行第一个科学研究项目。但是，美国东南部的许多学校都集中了他们的资源，并接管了两种望远镜的运营。东南天文学研究协会（SARA）在亚利桑那州的基特峰国家天文台上运营着一辆望远镜，另一个在智利的塞罗·托洛洛（Cerro Tololo Tololo）跨美洲天文台上运营。民族光学天文学观察者将北半球的望远镜转移到萨拉（Sara）和那里的运营始于1993年。最近，该财团能够获得计划在2009年夏季开始运行的南半球望远镜，但要进行富有成效的研究。但是，远程计算机需要远距离图片：远程图像远处是远距离的图片，高品质的速度及其效率高品质，供应量高品质。星星。东田纳西州立大学的理查德·伊加斯（Richard Igance）博士正在协调努力，以取代较旧望远镜上的过时和不可靠的乐器，并同时为新望远镜配备新的望远镜。这项资金来自国家科学基金会的主要研究工具（MRI）计划。萨拉教职员工将使用新仪器的望远镜进行天文学研究，并训练学生使用望远镜并进行研究项目。