Fast Transients and Furious Spectroscopy: Revealing the High-Speed Sky with Argus Pathfinder

快速瞬变和激烈的光谱：利用 Argus Pathfinder 揭示高速天空

• 批准号: 2308228
• 负责人: Nicholas Law
• 金额: $ 62.87万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2308228&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Fast; Transients; Furious; Spectroscopy; Revealing

New sensor technologies and mass-produced optical systems will allow the Argus Pathfinder project to push to far faster survey speeds than any telescope before, which will enable new discoveries. For example, superflares are very fast bursts of radiation from stars. Understanding superflare behavior is crucial to the search for life beyond Earth, and it requires high-speed observations and the ability to point multiple telescopes very rapidly to events as they occur. Other mysterious fast events have been seen at other wavelengths, and they have visible-light counterparts that can shed light on what they are. These and other “transients” occur at random times and places in the sky. The best way to catch them is to survey as much of the sky as possible, as quickly as possible. Argus Pathfinder will make a “movie” of a very large patch of sky. It will observe thousands of transients as they evolve, and rapidly alert other ground- and space-based telescopes. The investigators will contribute to developing and upgrading the Morehead Planetarium’s major time-domain astronomy exhibit to improve the engagement and astronomical inspiration of the approximately 150,000 schoolchildren who interact with the exhibit each year. The 2.3GPix Argus Pathfinder array covers a stripe of the sky 92 degrees in declination and 3.7 degrees in right ascension, with 1.4”/pixel sampling almost reaching the atmospheric-seeing limit. The system tracks each stripe of the sky for 15 minutes, and thus covers almost the entire Northern sky each night. Pathfinder’s CMOS detectors are capable of reading out entire frames with only millisecond-level overheads and have 1-electron-level readnoise, which comes close to single-photon detection capabilities. Pathfinder’s large high-speed detector array, wide passband, and very wide field of view combine to make the system capable of reaching orders of magnitude beyond the closest comparable searches for 1-second duration transients. In the 30s-cadence base survey, Pathfinder will push eight magnitudes deeper than the best previous probes capable of covering the entire sky, and it will cover a survey area at least 5,000 times larger than the deep, narrow minute-timescale probes attempted on larger telescopes. These capabilities will enable a comprehensive characterization of the high-speed sky – and detailed astrophysical measurements of individual populations such as fast radio bursts and stellar superflares. For the latter, Pathfinder will obtain time-resolved light curves and spectra to model the flares’ all-important energetic particle releases and constrain their habitability impacts. For the largest flares, the system will use the new rapid-slew capabilities of the Swift satellite to obtain minute-timescale direct EUV and X-ray flux measurements, and thus a direct measurement of potential planetary habitability impacts.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.

新的传感器技术和批量生产的光学系统将使阿格斯探路者项目能够达到比以前任何望远镜都要快得多的勘测速度，从而实现新的发现。例如，超级耀斑是来自恒星的非常快的辐射爆发。了解超级耀斑行为对于寻找地球以外的生命至关重要，它需要高速观测以及在事件发生时将多个望远镜快速指向事件的能力。其他神秘的快速事件也在其他波长下被发现，它们有可见光对应物，可以揭示它们的本质。这些和其他“瞬变”​​发生在天空中随机的时间和地点。捕捉它们的最佳方法是尽可能快地勘测尽可能多的天空。阿格斯探路者号将制作一部关于一大片天空的“电影”。它将观察数千个瞬变的演变，并迅速向其他地面和太空望远镜发出警报。研究人员将致力于开发和升级莫尔黑德天文馆的主要时域天文学展览，以提高每年与展览互动的约 150,000 名学生的参与度和天文灵感。 2.3GPix Argus Pathfinder阵列覆盖了赤纬92度、赤经3.7度的天空条纹，1.4英寸/像素采样几乎达到了大气视见极限。系统跟踪天空的每个条纹15分钟，因此每晚几乎覆盖整个北方天空。Pathfinder的CMOS探测器能够以毫秒级的速度读出整个帧。 开销并具有 1 电子级读取噪声，接近单光子检测能力。 Pathfinder 的大型高速探测器阵列、宽通带和非常宽的视场相结合，使该系统能够达到比最接近的 1 秒持续时间瞬态搜索相当的数量级。在 30 秒节奏的基础调查中，探路者将比之前最好的探测器深入八个数量级 覆盖整个天空，它覆盖的勘测区域至少比在大型望远镜上尝试的深而窄的分钟时间尺度探测器大 5,000 倍。这些功能将能够对高速天空进行全面的表征，并对单个群体进行详细的天体物理测量，例如快速射电爆发和恒星超级耀斑。对于后者，探路者将获得时间分辨光曲线和光谱来模拟耀斑 最重要的高能粒子释放并限制其对宜居性的影响。对于最大的耀斑，该系统将利用 Swift 卫星的新快速转换功能来获得分钟时间尺度的直接 EUV 和 X 射线通量测量，从而直接测量潜在的行星宜居性影响。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势进行评估，被认为值得支持 以及更广泛的影响审查标准。