Unlike most states in the clear-skied, western part of America, there are no modern astronomical telescopes in Utah. This situation is distressing since Utah universities, lead by BYU, and grant more undergraduate physics degrees per capita than any other state in the union. BYU has an especially strong program with 64 astronomy majors as of 2004. These undergraduates go to all the best graduate programs in the nation. It is in the best interest of American astronomy that they be properly trained on state-of-the-art facilities. It is also in the best interest of American astronomy to establish an intermountain facility that can be used for dissertations, stand-alone research projects, and research projects that support the work done on larger telescopes elsewhere. It is within the scope and mission of the NSF and the PREST program to improve education and research by helping secure a modern telescope in Utah.
The premier astronomy program in Utah is at BYU, which owns the 20-year-old West Mountain Observatory (WMO) at the southern end of Utah Lake. The facility itself is in good condition but its 50-year-old 0.6m telescope (the largest telescope in Utah) is worn out and inadequate for modern research. Funds from this award will be used to replace the 0.6m telescope with a 0.9m DFM telescope and outfit it with a modern imager, spectrometer, and guiding system. This size is a good fit for the existing facilities.
A 0.9m telescope is small by modern standards. The advent of larger telescopes has changed their use and focus but has not made them obsolete for doing front-line research. Smaller telescopes are useful for time-series work and specialized surveying of the type not usually possible at over-subscribed larger observatories. Programs of research in nebular and extragalactic imaging, nearby galaxy nuclear spectroscopy, stellar photometry and stellar spectroscopy will be pursued.
The retrofitted WMO will be used for research and education projects at BYU and made available for 10 weeks per year to outside universities through a time allocation process. In addition to these 10 weeks, 2 weeks per year will be made available to students at the BYU sister institutions in Idaho and Hawaii. This new telescope will enable the campus 0.4m telescope to be used exclusively for an expanded education and public outreach program. This award will greatly strengthen the astronomy program at BYU and extend astronomical research and teaching opportunities to institutions and students that currently do not have access to modern facilities located on a convenient and dark site.
This award is funded by the Division of Astronomical Sciences and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities.
We live in the "golden age" of astronomy. Technological advancements have made telescopes ever larger and more precise and has equipped them with marvelous electronic detectors and imagers. The Hubble Space Telescope is perhaps the best example of this but it is not the only one. The 8m Gemini telescope or twin 10m Keck telescopes dwarf the HST and generate invaluable spectroscopic and non-visible data that – although not as photogenic as HST images – are scientifically indispensable. It may therefore come as a surprise that astronomical observations rarely if ever begin with the largest telescopes. HST or Gemini or Keck observations are the culmination of research that was typically begun years or even decades before with smaller telescopes. Indeed, some have estimated that there needs to be at least 10 telescopes of one meter diameter aperture or less to support every telescope larger than four meters. Let me illustrate why with an example. The sky is vast and filled with an amazing array of objects: stars, nebulae, galaxies, etc. Galaxies were not discovered until the 1700s well after telescopes were invented. It was a mere 100 years ago that galaxies were proven to be vast systems of stars and not closer swirls of gas. Although huge in size, they are so very distant when compared to stars that they are consequently faint and difficult to study. So what do we do? We start our studies by taking courser survey data with smaller telescopes. Decades ago we imaged the entire sky in red and green filters using a 1.2m telescope. from this came catalogues of objects chosen for more careful examination. More recently a large section of the northern hemisphere was imaged with a 2.5m telescope. The popular and successful GalaxyZoo project posted this data on-line and asked people to categorize galaxies imaged by it for "further research" by larger telescopes. This further research is possible only because appropriate objects have been gleaned from the courser image data obtained with smaller telescopes. The project funded by this NSF grant was to build and make available to other institutions and research projects a 0.9m telescope of superb imaging quality. This telescope had three main purposes: To provide data to research teams that were in need of quality imaging. To train students in observational techniques. To conduct research appropriate to the telescope size. A primary mirror diameter of 0.9m is ideal for imaging studies. And BYU has one of the largest undergraduate astronomy programs in America with its students going to all the major graduate programs in America. This telescope not only provides America with another much-needed imaging system but it also is the means for training the next generation of observers before they go to institutions where training time on high-quality telescopes is more limited. The telescope was built and delivered to the BYU West Mountain Observatory in the fall of 2009. it was immediately put to use on quasar, star, and galaxy projects involving universities in Utah, California, Colorado, Arizona, Maryland, Ohio, and Canada. The superb imaging quality of this telescope is illustrated by the accompanying figures. Two images are of the telescope site and telescope itself. The others are of data taken with the telescope. We have made significant contributions to the study of active galaxy nuclei, variable stars, nebulae, and star cluster. Now that the telescope is build and fully supported, this research will continue for the next several decades.
