Constantine P. Deliyannis Indiana University
The WIYN 0.9-meter Consortium will a) build a modern, half-degree imager ("HDI") for the WIYN 0.9m telescope at Kitt Peak, b) make associated observatory upgrades for this imager, and c) carry out new outreach initiatives. This imager will feature a monolithic, 4-amplifier, fast-readout 4Kx4K CCD with 15 micron (=0.4") pixels that yield a 29'x29' field with high (and flat) U-response. HDI will replace the 15-year-old S2KB CCD, whose performance has been degrading and is vulnerable to complete failure. The return to the US Community includes a 10-20% share (Section7) of the observing time on the new imager for five full years, access to all archived data after a modest proprietary period, and access to WITN's special queues, including the long-term monitoring queue and the "opportunity" queue.
The WIYN 0.9-meter Observatory is operated by WIYN Observatory, Inc. and serves a consortium of ten partner institutions from across the nation. W09 supports highly diverse short and long-term scientific projects, educational activities with undergraduate and graduate students including three REU programs and a major outreach program to K-12 teachers (Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education). Most basically, this new imager will permit continued operations of this very successful and vital facility; failure of the present CCD would be the end of operations. HDI will also increase significantly the quality of observations and the observing efficiency, it will enable new and more ambitious scientific endeavors, and it will enable us to continue our current educational/outreach initiatives and goals and to improve and expand them.
This award will help to ensure a future for the WIYN 0.9m observatory (including continued access to the community of MOSAIC on the 0.9m, which has been oversubscribed by an average factor of 1.83 during the past 7 semesters). HDI will enable a number of diverse short term and long term programs and surveys, including fundamental precision open cluster UBVRI and Stromgren photometry using multiple photometric nights per cluster to reduce systematic calibration errors; a comprehensive survey of all northern open clusters; surface photometry and Halpha photometry of galaxies, broad-band and narrowband Halpha optical studies of the ALFALFA-HI survey galaxies, studies of starburst and normal galaxies; long-term monitoring of stellar periods in open clusters and star forming regions, and of long period variables in globular clusters; monitoring of cataclysmic variables and activity in open clusters; extensive surveys of of the stellar populations in M31 and M33 and of Milky Way spiral arms through OB associations; and coordinated photometric/spectroscopic observations with other telescopes such as the WIYN 3.5.
The WIYN Consortium has a track record of using the telescope to train numerous undergraduate students and graduate students. The survival of the observatory through HDI will allow these activities to continue, and the participants' experiences will be enhanced by the superior pedagogy enabled from use of HDI's state-of-the-art technology: introductory-level students, teachers, and Tohono O'odham tribe members will get a better glimpse of high-level astronomy, while advanced undergraduate and graduate students will receive superior training to prepare them for a career in astronomy.
This award is funded by the Division of Astronomical Sciences and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities.
The WIYN 0.9m-meter Consortium consists of approximately ten member universities whose astronomers use the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona (hereafter, "the Observatory" or "W09"), which is one of the premier astronomical sites in the world, to further their research, teaching, and outreach activities. The Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium is also a member, and provides telescope access to a number of additional Wisconsin universities. In exchange for use of the "S2KB" and "MOSAIC" imagers that belong to NOAO (National Optical Astronomical Observatories), the entire US national astronomical community has had access to this telescope. Finally, some time is also available to the public though our member The Kitt Peak Visitors Center ("VSQ"). In research, while some astronomers have used this telescope to carry out their fundamental research, others have used it (for example) to conduct surveys that help them prepare follow-up spectroscopic or "deep" (faint object) programs on larger telescopes. In teaching, W09 has been used in a variety of contexts, including, for example, a) giving 100-level non-science majors a glimpse of astronomical research by participating in 0.9m data acquisition, b) training undergraduate physical science majors in astronomical data acquisition, c) training undergraduate astrophysics majors in carrying our research projects, some of which lead to honors theses, and d) training graduate students who earn masters and PhD theses based on W09 data. Training at the W09 has been an important component of the Indiana, Wisconsin, and NOAO astronomy REU programs; most of these students have gone on to graduate studies in a STEM discipline. Our many outreach initiatives include providing material for the San Francisco State University planetarium program; involving teacher participants of the Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education run by NOAO in learning about data acquisition at the W09; providing observing experiences for students enrolled at the Tohono O’odham Community College (located on the reservation where Kitt Peak is located); and making nights available to the public through the VSQ. The purpose of the grant was to provide a state-of-the-art imager for the Observatory, namely the Half Degree Imager ("HDI"), and to make other Observatory improvements. It was hoped that HDI would be far superior to the aging S2KB and would replace it; it was also recognized that MOSAIC might become unavailable to W09. In exchange for the NSF funding, the Observatory is making a fraction of HDI time available to the entire US astronomical community through NOAO for a period of five years. All proposed improvements have been carried out, beginning in the early part of the grant period. The most major improvements included new telescope RA and dec motors; an improved ramp up/down dome motor system; improvements to the Observatory lightning protection system; Halpha, Stromgren, and Sloan filter sets; and HDI itself. HDI began its second commissioning run in October 2014, and is now available to astronomers on a shared-risk basis. Although - as is usually the case with most new instruments - we are still hoping for a few more improvements in HDI's performance, we already know that HDI delivers on important features that we had hoped it would have: it covers a large area with sharp resolution (more than twice the areal coverage of S2KB with sharper resolution); in particular, it covers a square area that is half a degree on a side (that side is about equal to the diameter of the Moon) using (small) 15-micron pixels that can deliver seeing as good as 0.6"; it has high response in the ultraviolet (higher and flatter than S2KB, making it also easier to calibrate); it has fast readout (35 sec in one-amp mode and 9 sec in 4-amp mode; S2KB's is about 3 minutes); and it has a flat CCD producing beautifully focused images over the entire CCD (S2KB was warped, making uniform focus impossible). These features greatly enhance the Observatory's capabilities, in some cases enabling programs that would have been impractical previously. For example, photometry of open star clusters typically involves exposures that are of order 1 minute or less. The short readout time means these programs can be carried out literally 3-4 times faster than before, enabling much larger open cluster surveys. Regarding broader impacts, besides the numerous undergraduate and graduate students mentioned above that have received training, and that will receive training in the future, all three Observatory Site Managers have furthered their professional development in invaluable ways, as have the Observatory's Telescope Scientists, and even the PI, as this is his first Instrumentation project.
