Measurement Astrophysics: SI-Calibrated Standard Stars

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Dr. McGraw and his collaborators will undertake an observational and instrumental effort to create a series of standard stars whose flux (energy received per second) is accurately calibrated. The project will include modifications to the Astronomical Lidar for Extinction, an NSF-funded effort to use light scattering from lasers to measure the transmission properties of the atmosphere. The main goals of the project are to implement the new instrumentation to measure the extinction in the atmosphere to accuracies below 1% (including variations with time, direction, and wavelength), and to obtain simultaneous measurements of candidate standard stars with a spectrophotometric telescope calibrated with standard photodiodes.The techniques and instruments developed by this project would have a broad impact to the community, particularly if the instrumentation is duplicated and adopted by other observatories. This would increase the number of useful nights at major facilities by providing better atmospheric corrections, and would address calibration issues for projects such as surveys for dark energy. There will also be an extensive effort in workforce development, especially by including undergraduates in several different phases of the effort. This would target students at the University of New Mexico, a major Hispanic-serving institution.