Measurement Astrophysics: SI-Calibrated Standard Stars

麦格劳博士和他的合作者将进行观测和仪器的努力，以创建一系列标准恒星，其通量（每秒接收的能量）被精确校准。 该项目将包括对灭绝天文激光雷达的修改，这是一项由NSF资助的工作，利用激光的光散射来测量大气的传输特性。 该项目的主要目标是实施新的仪器来测量大气中的消光，精度低于1%（包括随时间、方向和波长的变化），并利用标准光电二极管校准的分光光度望远镜同时测量候选标准星。该项目开发的技术和仪器将对社会产生广泛影响，特别是如果仪器被复制并被其他天文台采用。 这将通过提供更好的大气校正来增加主要设施的有用夜晚的数量，并将解决暗能量调查等项目的校准问题。 还将在劳动力发展方面做出广泛的努力，特别是在几个不同阶段的努力中包括本科生。 这将针对新墨西哥州大学的学生，这是一个主要的西班牙裔服务机构。

Dr. McGraw and his collaborators will undertake an observational and instrumental effort to create a series of standard stars whose flux (energy received per second) is accurately calibrated. The project will include modifications to the Astronomical Lidar for Extinction, an NSF-funded effort to use light scattering from lasers to measure the transmission properties of the atmosphere. The main goals of the project are to implement the new instrumentation to measure the extinction in the atmosphere to accuracies below 1% (including variations with time, direction, and wavelength), and to obtain simultaneous measurements of candidate standard stars with a spectrophotometric telescope calibrated with standard photodiodes.The techniques and instruments developed by this project would have a broad impact to the community, particularly if the instrumentation is duplicated and adopted by other observatories. This would increase the number of useful nights at major facilities by providing better atmospheric corrections, and would address calibration issues for projects such as surveys for dark energy. There will also be an extensive effort in workforce development, especially by including undergraduates in several different phases of the effort. This would target students at the University of New Mexico, a major Hispanic-serving institution.