|
|
WHAT IS AIRO?
We aim to exploit the unique conditions at the South Pole by
establishing a new permanent national facility, the Antarctic Infrared
Observatory. AIRO will be optimized for wide-field imaging in
the thermal infrared. The unique conditions at the South Pole site
provide several advantages:
® Cold Temperature: With a mean temperature of -50 C, the thermal
backgrounds are greatly reduced.
® Dark Skies: In the thermal infrared, the sky at the South Pole
is much darker than at other ground-based sites, at some wavelengths by
as much as a factor of 50.
® Stable Atmosphere: Because the polar plateau has very stable weather,
sky noise is drastically reduced.
® Constant Darkness: For phenomena with time scales of hours
to days, continuous observations are highly desirable. The South Pole is
the only ground-based site that provides uninterrupted coverage for long
periods of time.
AIRO will answer key questions about the nature
of high redshift galaxies, the evolution of stars and galaxies, the
formation of stars, and the physics of the interstellar medium.
Because the South Pole's enormous advantage in thermal
background translates directly into increased sensitivity and
observing speed, a small, inexpensive telescope at the South Pole can
outperform larger telescopes at other sites.
AIRO will operate a 1.8-meter telescope optimized for wide-field
imaging, queue observing, and standardized data processing.
As a national facility open to guest observers, AIRO will be
a flexible and ongoing general purpose observatory. AIRO's first
instrument, AIROCAM, will make unique wide field images in the
largely unexplored 2.2 - 5.3 micron waveband. AIRO will play a complementary
role to ground-based 8-m telescopes and future airborne and
space missions such as SOFIA, SIRTF, and NGST. Moreover, AIRO
provides the only low-background, ground-based test-bed for
instrumentation being developed for space. As demonstrated by the 60 cm
SPIREX telescope and the Abu camera, both the infrastructure and
the technology are in place now to field AIRO at the South Pole.
® The large field of view and excellent sensitivity of AIRO are
optimally suited for the first deep, widefield surveys and global studies
in the 2.2 - 5.3 waveband. With this unique capability, AIRO will
make important observations of high-redshift galaxies, protoplanetary
disks, brown dwarfs, and star-forming regions.
® AIRO can relentlessly monitor rapid time-variable sources
such as gravitational microlenses without interruption for long
periods of time.
® AIRO will be cost-effective and flexible. Because it
requires an aperture of only $\sim 2$ m to achieve similar
sensitivities as the 8-meter telescopes, a telescope at the South Pole
is more cost-effective. Moreover, upgrades to mid-infrared,
spectroscopic, or polarimatric instruments can be implemented rapidly
and relatively cheaply.
® All important aspects of AIRO: the telescope, camera, data pipeline,
and time allocation, have been prototyped and thoroughly tested at the
South Pole. Because AIRO uses mature technology it can be fielded
immediately with low risk.
We have assembled a seasoned team of astronomers and engineers with expertise
in Antarctic astrophysics, infrared instrumentation, data pipelining,
and public access. In the first two years of our five-year plan,
we will procure a 1.8 m telescope as an off-the-shelf item from
a vendor, develop the data pipeline, build the three-color infrared
camera AIROCAM, and prepare the test site at Lowell Observatory in
Flagstaff. The next two years will be devoted to an intensive period
of systems integration and testing. Finally, in the fifth year
we will deploy the system to the South Pole and begin a season
of scientific observations.
|
