MRI: Acquisition of an integrated telescope system for astrophysical surveys and transient discovery

天文学家对夜空进行大范围搜索，以寻找新类型的天体，或对已知类型的天体进行计数和表征，或寻找具有特定特征的天体。近年来，为了寻找近地天体(NEO)，人们对“移动物体”进行了无数次搜索。与距离较远的背景物体相比，距离地球较近的物体在天空中的移动速度似乎足够快，以至于它们的运动可以在几天甚至几个小时内被检测到。这些天体相对较近，位于我们的太阳系内。它们大多是小行星或彗星。一旦检测到这些物体，就可以跟踪它们，并预测它们未来的运动。尤其令人感兴趣的是，其预测的运动将使它们更接近地球，甚至可能危险地接近地球。这样的天体被称为潜在危险小行星的PHA。Catalina Sky Survey一直在图森附近的莱蒙山天文台进行一项近地天体调查，就发现的近地天体数量而言，这是最成功的一次调查--过去几年发现的近地天体中约有70%是由CSS发现的。此类调查遇到的问题之一是“假阳性”--寻找证据证明天空中似乎有一个移动物体，结果证明是其他东西，可能是探测器中的缺陷，或者是模仿真实物体的微弱电子“噪音”，或者是穿过探测器的宇宙射线留下了看起来像物体的痕迹或条纹。如果假阳性的发生率能够降低，这类调查的效率可能会显著提高。北亚利桑那大学的大卫·特里林博士将为css购买一款新相机，该相机覆盖的天空比目前的相机更多。他将把他的新相机与亚利桑那州北部洛厄尔天文台的另一台望远镜上的另一台相机耦合在一起。这两个望远镜将一起工作，在天空中搜索移动的物体。如果发现一个带有一个相机的候选移动物体，第二个望远镜将把它的相机指向天空的同一部分。如果移动对象被两个摄像机都检测到，那么它几乎肯定是真正的感兴趣对象。特里林博士的工作是由美国国家科学基金会天文科学部通过重大研究仪器项目资助的。

Astronomers conduct wide-area searches of the night sky to search for new kinds objects, or to count and characterize known kinds of objects, or to find objects with specific characteristics. In recent years there have been numerous searches for "moving objects" in an effort to find near earth objects (NEOs). Objects that are close to earth will appear to move across the sky fast enough relative to more distant background objects that their motion can be detected over days or even hours. These objects are relatively nearby and are located within our solar system. Most of them are asteroids or comets. Once detected, the objects can be tracked and their future motion predicted. Of particular interest are objects whose predicted motion will bring them even closer, perhaps dangerously close, to earth. Such objects are called PHAs for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. The Catalina Sky Survey has been conducting an NEO survey from the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson and is the most successful survey in terms of numbers of NEOs discovered - something like 70% of the NEOs that have been discovered in the past few years have been discovered by CSS.One of the problems that such surveys encounter is a "false positive" - finding evidence for what appears to be a moving object on the sky that turns out to be to be something else, perhaps a flaw in a detector, or faint electronic "noise" that mimics a real object, or cosmic rays that pass through the detector leaving marks or streaks that look like objects. If the incidence of false positives could be reduced, the efficiency of such surveys could increase significantly. Dr. David Trilling of Northern Arizona University will acquire a new camera for CSS that covers more sky than its current camera. He will couple his new camera with another camera on another telescope at Lowell Observatory in northern Arizona. These two telescopes will work together, searching the sky for things that move. If a candidate moving object is found with one camera, the second telescope will point its camera to the same part of the sky. If the moving object is detected by both cameras then it is almost surely a real object of interest. Dr. Trilling's work is funded by NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences through the Major Research Instrumentation program.