Departments
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Week of 27 March 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 25 |
Feature
Article
BU and Arizona observatory form partnership
Looking west and up
by Brian Fitzgerald
Welcome to dark sky country. Boston University's department of astronomy and Lowell Observatory in Arizona recently formed a partnership for the joint use and development of the 72-inch Perkins Telescope, located near Flagstaff.
"Our faculty and research students will have ample time on a superbly maintained research telescope at a clear, dark site," says Jeffrey Hughes, CAS astronomy professor and department chairman. "As we develop new cameras and spectroscopes with the Lowell staff, we will have additional opportunities to train our students in instrument building."
The partnership was announced on March 23. Under the agreement, effective August 1, each institution will equally divide the use of the telescope during the year. Lowell Observatory will be responsible for operational support while the two institutions will jointly develop instrumentation for use on the telescope.
"We are excited about the new partnership with the Boston University astronomers," says Bob Millis, director of Lowell Observatory. "Their research complements that of the Lowell Observatory astronomers and their instrumentation plans are in close alignment with our own."
Boston University will locate a full-time postdoctoral fellow in Flagstaff who will work with Lowell Observatory staff in optimizing the optical performance of the telescope. BU will also offer expertise in mid-infrared astronomy and in polarimetry.
"Both Lowell and Boston University have an interest in developing a camera that's sensitive in the near-infrared," says Millis. "The camera will be designed to detect more heat than light. Consequently, it will record energy from celestial bodies that is beyond our eye sensitivity. Measuring heat is often a good way of detecting dust that has been heated up in the vicinity of stars. Boston University already has a good deal of capability in that area."
The Perkins Telescope, the largest in northern Arizona, is located 15 miles southeast of Flagstaff at Anderson Mesa, Lowell Observatory's dark-sky site. "The computer-controlled Perkins Telescope points and tracks celestial objects with incredible accuracy," says Millis.
Originally located in Delaware, Ohio, the telescope was moved to Anderson Mesa in 1960 under a three-way partnership involving Ohio Wesleyan University, Ohio State University, and Lowell Observatory.
Millis will visit the Charles River Campus in mid-April to meet with BU astronomy department professors to determine which new instruments will suit their research needs.
"Starting with a clean slate on the telescope gives us a great advantage because we'll have the opportunity to build a completely new set of modern instruments," says Hughes. These will include spectroscopes, which are among the most important tools in astronomy. Most of what astronomers know about stars has been learned by studying their spectra -- the display of colors formed when a light beam is dispersed and brought to focus. "Astronomers use telescopes first and foremost to collect light," he says. "But then they have to analyze the images, and that's where spectroscopes come in."
BU's astronomy department and its associated Center for Space Physics have 23 faculty members who pursue a wide range of research programs in astronomy, astrophysics, and space physics. The partnership with Lowell Observatory provides BU astronomers with access to an optical facility that will complement their current microwave and spaceborne observational facilities. These include a submillimeter telescope at South Pole Station, energetic particle experiments on NASA's Polar and Cluster satellites, and the TERRIERS satellite, built at BU, which will be launched later this year.
Lowell Observatory is also a partner with the U.S. Naval Observatory and the Naval Research Laboratory in developing a pioneering optical interferometer, the largest in the world, also located on Anderson Mesa.
In addition to the Perkins Telescope and the optical interferometer, Lowell Observatory currently operates three other telescopes at its dark-sky site. One of these, the LONEOS Schmidt, was also purchased from Ohio Wesleyan as part of the Perkins transaction. At present the LONEOS Schmidt is being equipped to search for asteroids and comets in orbits that potentially lead to collisions with the Earth.