Production and deployment of environment-controlled enclosures for the Network of Robotic Echelle Spectrographs

机器人阶梯光谱仪网络环境控制外壳的生产和部署

• 批准号: 1508464
• 负责人: Robert Siverd
• 金额: $ 28.51万
• 依托单位: Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2017-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1508464&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Production; deployment; environment; controlled; enclosures

A large number of planets around other stars ("exoplanets") are being discovered or will be discovered by space missions like Kepler and TESS. There is a shortage of ground-based instruments that can follow up on these discoveries and measure the properties of the exoplanets themselves. This significant bottleneck is being addressed by the construction of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT), a worldwide network of primarily 1-meter telescopes. The LCOGT project is active in education, operating an extensive program of student observing on their telescopes. Numerous students from high-school to university seniors are employed as interns. Designs developed for LCOGT are open-source, and science data are made available to the community.This award will fund the construction of 6 identical environment-controlled enclosures for the LCOGT Network of Robotic Echelle Spectrographs (NRES), which is currently under construction with NSF funding. These thermal enclosures will ensure that the NRES reaches its original design requirement for radial velocity stability. Timely completion of NRES will enable follow-up observations of planetary system candidates as well as a wide range of science requiring high-resolution spectroscopy of relatively bright targets. Each spectrograph is coupled to two independently-targetable 1-meter robotic telescopes that function as a single, global instrument with flexible scheduling capabilities.

其他恒星周围的大量行星（“系外行星”）正在或即将被开普勒和TESS等太空任务发现。目前缺乏地面仪器来跟踪这些发现并测量系外行星本身的性质。 这一重大瓶颈正在通过建造拉斯坎布雷斯天文台全球望远镜（LCOGT）来解决，这是一个主要由1米望远镜组成的全球网络。LCOGT项目在教育方面很活跃，为学生提供了一个广泛的望远镜观测项目。从高中到大四的许多学生都被聘为实习生。为LCOGT开发的设计是开源的，科学数据可供社区使用。该奖项将资助为LCOGT机器人阶梯光谱仪网络（NRES）建造6个相同的环境控制外壳，该网络目前正在由NSF资助建设中。 这些热外壳将确保NRES达到其径向速度稳定性的原始设计要求。及时完成NRES将能够对行星系统候选者进行后续观测，以及需要对相对明亮的目标进行高分辨率光谱分析的广泛科学。 每台摄谱仪都与两台可独立瞄准的1米机器人望远镜相连，作为一台具有灵活调度能力的全球仪器。