Instrumentation for a CCD Survey for White Dwarf Stars

白矮星是包括太阳在内的大多数恒星进化的最终产物。对它们的研究不仅从这个角度来说很重要，而且因为它们非常适合于确定我们银河系圆盘的年龄，还因为它们激发了内部振荡，可以用来探测它们的结构。首席调查员(PI)希望用他已经建造的新的大型电荷耦合器件探测器来升级他建造的广域相机。这架相机将被放置在一个小型望远镜的末端，供一名博士生用来测量北方天空中多达100万个微弱物体的亮度。这项工作将对这些物体进行普查，并将改善我们对它们在颜色光度中的分布的理解，从中可以推断它们的年龄。因此，这项工作将为以后的研究提供许多新的白矮星候选者，并导致对我们银河系盘状天体的精确测定。

White dwarfs are the evolutionary end product of most kinds of stars, including the Sun. Studies of them are important not only from this standpoint but because they are well suited to determine the age of the disk of our Galaxy and also because they excite internal oscillations that can be used to probe their structures. The Principal Investigator (PI) wishes to upgrade a wide field camera he has built with a new large Charged Coupled Device detector that he has already constructed. This camera will be placed on the end of a small telescope and used by a Ph. D. candidate to survey the brightness of up to a million faint objects across the northern sky. This work will give a census of these objects and will improve our understanding of their distribution in luminosity in color, from which one can infer their ages. Thus, this work will provide many new white dwarf candidates for later study as well as lead to a refined determination of the disk of our Galaxy.