MRI: Acquisition of an integrated telescope system for astrophysical surveys and transient discovery

MRI：采购用于天体物理调查和瞬态发现的集成望远镜系统

• 批准号: 1229776
• 负责人: David Trilling
• 金额: $ 62.81万
• 依托单位: Northern Arizona University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2018-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1229776&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: MRI; Acquisition; integrated; telescope; system

Astronomers conduct wide-area searches of the night sky to search for new kinds objects, or to count and characterize known kinds of objects, or to find objects with specific characteristics. In recent years there have been numerous searches for "moving objects" in an effort to find near earth objects (NEOs). Objects that are close to earth will appear to move across the sky fast enough relative to more distant background objects that their motion can be detected over days or even hours. These objects are relatively nearby and are located within our solar system. Most of them are asteroids or comets. Once detected, the objects can be tracked and their future motion predicted. Of particular interest are objects whose predicted motion will bring them even closer, perhaps dangerously close, to earth. Such objects are called PHAs for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. The Catalina Sky Survey has been conducting an NEO survey from the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson and is the most successful survey in terms of numbers of NEOs discovered - something like 70% of the NEOs that have been discovered in the past few years have been discovered by CSS.One of the problems that such surveys encounter is a "false positive" - finding evidence for what appears to be a moving object on the sky that turns out to be to be something else, perhaps a flaw in a detector, or faint electronic "noise" that mimics a real object, or cosmic rays that pass through the detector leaving marks or streaks that look like objects. If the incidence of false positives could be reduced, the efficiency of such surveys could increase significantly. Dr. David Trilling of Northern Arizona University will acquire a new camera for CSS that covers more sky than its current camera. He will couple his new camera with another camera on another telescope at Lowell Observatory in northern Arizona. These two telescopes will work together, searching the sky for things that move. If a candidate moving object is found with one camera, the second telescope will point its camera to the same part of the sky. If the moving object is detected by both cameras then it is almost surely a real object of interest. Dr. Trilling's work is funded by NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences through the Major Research Instrumentation program.

天文学家对夜空进行大面积搜索，以寻找新种类的天体，或对已知种类的天体进行计数和定性，或寻找具有特定特征的天体。 近年来，为了寻找近地物体，对“移动物体”进行了多次搜索。 相对于更远的背景物体，靠近地球的物体在天空中移动的速度足够快，以至于它们的运动可以在几天甚至几小时内被检测到。 这些物体相对较近，位于我们的太阳系内。其中大多数是小行星或彗星。 一旦检测到，就可以跟踪对象并预测它们的未来运动。 特别令人感兴趣的是那些被预测的运动会使它们更接近地球，也许是危险地接近地球的物体。这些物体被称为潜在危险小行星的PHA。 卡塔利纳巡天计划一直在图森附近的莱蒙山天文台进行近地天体巡天，就发现的近地天体数量而言，该计划是最成功的巡天计划-过去几年中发现的近地天体中大约有70%是由中央科学院发现的，这种巡天计划遇到的问题之一是“误报”-寻找天空中看似移动的物体的证据，而事实证明它是别的东西，也许是探测器的一个缺陷，或者是模仿真实的物体的微弱电子“噪音”，或者是穿过探测器的宇宙射线留下看起来像物体的痕迹或条纹。 如果能够减少假阳性的发生率，这类调查的效率就可以大大提高。北方亚利桑那大学的大卫特里林博士将为CSS购买一台新的相机，它比目前的相机覆盖更多的天空。他将把他的新相机与亚利桑那州北方洛厄尔天文台的另一架望远镜上的另一架相机连接起来。 这两个望远镜将一起工作，在天空中寻找移动的物体。如果一个候选的移动物体被一台相机发现，第二台望远镜将把它的相机指向天空的同一部分。如果两个摄像机都检测到移动对象，则几乎可以肯定它是感兴趣的真实的对象。 Trilling博士的工作由NSF的天文科学部通过主要研究仪器计划资助。