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台天文相机的运作：南方宇宙学观测平行成像仪(PISCO)和南方微观天文台。PISCO是安装在6.5米粘土望远镜上的专业天文相机。Pisco有一种新颖的设计，它可以用四个大型CCD探测器同时拍摄四种不同颜色的照片，拍摄的天空大小约为月球的十分之一。虽然PISCO的独特设计使其对许多天文发现很有用，但PISCO的主要项目是对南极望远镜(SPT)发现的星系团进行后续研究。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(CMB)辐射。由于星系团中星系之间的空间充满了热等离子体气体，星系团在CMB面前以暗点的形式出现。这被称为Sunyaev-Zel‘dovich效应。到目前为止，在SPT发现的530个星系团中，有一个新安装的名为SPT-3G的高灵敏度探测器，它将发现数千个星系团。当SPT发现一个星系团时，我们所知道的只有它的位置和Sunyaev-Zel‘dovich黑子的大小，所以需要用光学望远镜进行后续观测。其中一些星系团将出现在现有的光学天文观测中，但另一些星系团将太暗而不能出现或将出现在调查区域之外--这些星系团将在该项目中由pisco跟进。星系团的数量和分布提供了有关暗能量的性质和历史的信息，暗能量是主导宇宙的神秘力量。此外，PISCO可能有助于通过对星系团质量的“弱透镜”测量来提高我们对中微子质量的了解。中微子质量的测定已被确认为粒子物理学的下一步重要步骤，这一进展可能会对物理和技术产生广泛影响，包括地球上的核物理。南方微型天文台将成为一个可通过互联网控制的自动化望远镜网络的一部分(mo-www.cfa.atherard.edu)。这些望远镜的设计目的是让全国的年轻人能够在他们的教室或课后中心调查深空的奇观。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观测站的科学教育部机器人望远镜网络结合起来，用于在线STEM学习社区。南极望远镜联合体已经完成了SPT-SZ和SPTpol的调查，目前正在进行SPT-3G深毫米波连续谱调查，该调查将通过Sunyaev-Zel‘dovich效应探测数以千计以前未知的星系团和星团。PISCO观测将在制作一个质量受限、红移独立的星系团星系表中发挥关键作用，星系团覆盖约9%的天空。这个可搜索的公共数据库将包括光学、红外和X射线的成像和光谱，使各种科学研究成为可能。在这个项目中，SPT联合体将对新的SPT-3G调查进行多波长跟踪，以完成SPT集群遗产档案。这项为期三年的计划将在4000平方度的天空区域内制作完整的星系团样本的光度和光谱星表。在分析了DES和VISTA等现有探测数据中的候选星团位置后，小组委员会将：(1)进行为红移和质量限制的完整性所需的额外光度成像观测；(2)获取这些星系团具有代表性的(尽管仍然很大)亚样本在最佳观测期内的微弱透镜测量数据；(3)通过出版物和可在网上查阅、可检索的档案，迅速以原始和精简的形式提供这些演变中的数据集；以及(4)分析用于宇宙学和中微子性质确定的数据。星系团和星系团的形成是暗物质的引力、相对论和非相对论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度是宇宙学的一个敏感探测器，是对其他宇宙学测试的补充和完善。这个项目中与红移无关的约8000个已确认星系团的档案将为我们在以下方面的深刻理解奠定基础：(A)宇宙的基本属性，包括对中微子物种的质量和数量的极大改善的限制，以及暗能量输出到z~2的性质和历史，以及(B)星系团及其星团内介质的天体物理，高密度环境中星系及其组成恒星的演化。这一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智力优势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.