Cosmology, Education, and Diverse Other Projects Supported by Two Astronomical Imaging Instruments

该项目支持智利安第斯山脉拉斯坎帕纳斯天文台的两个天文相机的运行：南方宇宙学观测平行成像仪（PISCO）和南方微型天文台。PISCO是安装在6.5米克莱望远镜上的专业天文相机。PISCO有一种新颖的设计，可以让它在一块大约是月球十分之一大小的天空上，用四个大型CCD探测器同时拍摄四种不同颜色的照片。虽然PISCO的独特设计使它对许多天文发现都很有用，但PISCO的主要项目是对南极望远镜（SPT）发现的星系团进行跟踪。SPT是世界上最灵敏、分辨率最高的望远镜，用于观测宇宙早期产生的宇宙微波背景辐射。因为星系团中星系之间的空间充满了热等离子体气体，所以星系团在CMB前看起来像一个黑点。这被称为Sunyaev-Zel'dovich效应。到目前为止，SPT已经发现了530个星系团，随着新安装的高灵敏度探测器SPT- 3g的出现，它将发现更多的星系团。当SPT发现一个星系团时，我们所知道的只是它的位置和Sunyaev-Zel'dovich点的大小，因此需要光学望远镜的后续观测。其中一些星系团将出现在现有的光学天空调查中，但其他星系团将太微弱而无法出现或将在调查区域之外-这些星系团将在这个项目中由PISCO跟踪。星系团的数量和分布提供了关于暗能量的性质和历史的信息，暗能量是支配宇宙的神秘力量。此外，通过对星系团质量的“弱透镜”测量，PISCO可能有助于提高我们对中微子质量的认识。中微子质量的测定被认为是粒子物理学的重要下一步，这一进步可能会对物理学和技术产生广泛的影响，包括地球上的核物理学。南方微型天文台将成为可通过互联网控制的自动望远镜网络的一部分（mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu）。这些望远镜的设计目的是使全国的年轻人能够在教室或课外活动中心探索深空的奇观。该项目将支持在拉斯坎帕纳斯安装一个机器人微型天文台望远镜，并将其与史密森天体物理天文台的科学教育部机器人望远镜网络集成，用于在线STEM学习社区。维护工作将有效地与PISCO操作共享。南极望远镜联盟已经完成了SPT-SZ和SPTPOL调查，现在正在进行SPT-3G深毫米波连续体调查，该调查将通过Sunyaev-Zel'dovich效应探测到数千个以前未知的星系团和星系群。皮斯科的观测将在制作一个质量有限的红移无关的星系团目录中发挥关键作用，该目录覆盖了约9%的天空。这个可搜索的公共数据库将包括成像以及光学、红外和x射线的光谱学，使各种各样的科学研究成为可能。在该项目中，SPT联盟将对新的SPT- 3g调查进行多波长跟踪，以完成SPT集群遗留档案。这个为期三年的项目将在4000平方度的天空中生成星系团体积完整样本的光度和光谱目录。在分析了现有调查数据（如DES和VISTA）中的候选聚类位置后，SPT团队将：(1)进行额外的光度成像观测，以确保红移和质量极限的完整性；(2)在这些星团的代表性（尽管仍然很大）子样本的良好视力期间获得弱透镜测量；(3)通过出版物和可访问的网络搜索档案，以原始和简化的形式，使这些不断发展的数据集迅速提供给天文学和STEM学习社区。(4)对宇宙学数据和中微子性质测定数据进行分析。星系团和星系群的形成是暗物质的引力、相对论性和非相对论性粒子的动力学以及暗能量的排斥效应之间的一场战斗。它们在宇宙时间内的丰富程度是对宇宙学的一种敏感探测，补充和完善了其他宇宙学测试。在这个项目中，大约8000个已确认的星系团的红移无关档案将为我们对以下方面的理解奠定基础：(a)宇宙的基本特性，包括对中微子种类的质量和数量的极大改进，以及对z ~ 2以内暗能量的性质和历史的限制，以及(b)星系团及其星系团内介质的天体物理学。高密度环境中星系及其组成恒星群的演化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project supports the operation of two astronomical cameras at the Las Campanas Observatory in the Andes Mountains of Chile: the Parallel Imager for Southern Cosmology Observations (PISCO) and the Southern MicroObservatory. PISCO is a professional astronomical camera mounted on the 6.5 meter Clay Telescope. PISCO has a novel design that allows it to take pictures in four different colors at the same time with four large CCD detectors over a piece of the sky about 1/10th the size of the moon. While the unique design of PISCO has made it useful for many astronomical discoveries, the principal project for which PISCO was built is follow-up of clusters of galaxies discovered by the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT is the most sensitive and highest-resolution telescope in the world for observing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation that arises in the early Universe. Because the space between galaxies in clusters is filled with hot plasma gas, galaxy clusters appear as a dark spots in front of the CMB. This is called the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. Among the discoveries by the SPT so far are 530 galaxy clusters, and with a newly-installed highly-sensitive detector called SPT-3G, it will discover thousands more. When the SPT discovers a galaxy cluster, all that is known about it is its location and the size of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich spot, so follow-up observations by an optical telescope are needed. Some of those galaxy clusters will appear in existing optical sky surveys, but others will be too faint to appear or will be outside the survey area -- those galaxy clusters will be followed-up by PISCO in this project. The number and distribution of galaxy clusters provides information about the nature and history of Dark Energy, the mysterious force that dominates the Universe. Furthermore, PISCO may contribute to improving our knowledge of the mass of neutrinos via "weak lensing" measurements of the mass of the clusters. The determination of the mass of neutrino species has been identified as an important next step in particle physics, an advance that may have wide-reaching impacts on physics and technology, including nuclear physics here on Earth. The Southern MicroObservatory will be part of a network of automated telescopes that can be controlled over the Internet (mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu). The telescopes are designed to enable youth nationwide to investigate the wonders of the deep sky from their classrooms or after-school centers. This project will support the installation of a robotic MicroObservatory telescope at Las Campanas and integrate it with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Science Education Department Robotic Telescope Network for the online STEM learning community. The maintenance effort will be efficiently shared with PISCO operations.The South Pole Telescope consortium has completed the SPT-SZ and SPTPOL surveys and is now engaged in the SPT-3G deep millimeter-wave continuum survey that will detect thousands of previously-unknown galaxy clusters and groups through the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. PISCO observations will play a key role in the production of a mass-limited redshift-independent catalog of galaxy clusters over ~9% of the sky. This searchable public database will include imaging as well as spectroscopy in the optical, infrared, and X-ray, enabling a wide variety of scientific studies. In this project, the SPT consortium will conduct multi-wavelength follow-up of the new SPT-3G survey in order to complete the SPT Cluster Legacy Archive. This three-year program will produce photometric and spectroscopic catalogs of volume complete samples of galaxy clusters over a 4000 square degree area of sky. After analyzing candidate cluster positions in existing survey data such as DES and VISTA, the SPT team will: (1) make the additional photometric imaging observations needed for completeness in redshift and mass limit, (2) obtain weak lensing measurements during periods of excellent seeing for a representative (albeit still large) subsample of these clusters, (3) make these evolving data sets promptly available to the astronomical and STEM learning communities in both raw and reduced form, through publications and a web-accessible, searchable archive, and (4) analyze the data for cosmology and the determination of neutrino properties. The formation of clusters and groups of galaxies is a battle between the gravitational attraction of Dark Matter, the dynamics of relativistic and non-relativistic particles, and the repulsive effect of Dark Energy. Their abundance over cosmic time is a sensitive probe of cosmology that complements and refines other cosmological tests. The redshift-independent archive of ~ 8000 confirmed clusters in this project will be the foundation for profound enhancements in our understanding of (a) fundamental properties of the Universe, including greatly improved constraints on the mass and number of neutrino species and the nature and history of Dark Energy out to z ~ 2, and (b) the astrophysics of galaxy clusters and their intracluster medium, the evolution of galaxies and their constituent stellar populations in high-density environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.