The Deep Sky Every Minute: Developing the Argus Array

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The Argus Array is planned to be the first large optical telescope to explore the entire deep sky simultaneously. Consisting of 650 moderate-aperture telescopes multiplexed into a common hemispherical dome, the Argus Array will have the equivalent collecting area of a 5m telescope, and the survey speed of the Vera Rubin Observatory, but will cover the sky in a very different way. The Array achieves deep imaging by observing every part of the sky at minute-cadence for 6-8 hours every night. Over five years, the Array will build a two-color, million-epoch movie of the northern sky, giving the astronomical community the unprecedented ability to follow the evolution of every brighter than 23rd-magnitude time-variable source across the sky simultaneously. This award will support construction of a prototype system to validate the Argus Array hardware and software design, while pioneering its science surveys. In terms of broader impacts, this project will 1) directly train two graduate students in big-data analysis techniques and astronomical instrumentation; 2) provide the opportunity for seven graduate students (four first-generation college) to more broadly participate in experimental astrophysics; 3) build the infrastructure to enable dozens of graduate students around the country to participate in a new large survey; 4) involve large numbers of undergraduates in professional astronomical instrumentation; 5) prototype the full Argus Array's major broader impacts projects, including the professional design of a world-class time-domain astronomy planetarium show and the development of middle-school MakerSpace projects to inspire the next generations of astronomical instrument builders.The Argus Array is a “fly’s eye” system that is being designed to explore a unique parameter space, with a cadence hundreds of times faster than any other deep sky survey. The system will be able to follow-up multiwavelength triggers orders of magnitude faster than current tiling astronomical surveys, monitor 300 million stars for planet-induced microlensing events, occultations, flares and other variability, search hundreds of thousands of white dwarfs for transiting planets and debris, detect supernovae early enough to probe the explosion's interactions with their progenitor environments, and will measure rotation rates, shapes and outburst rates for newly-discovered interstellar asteroids and comets as they cross the solar system.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.