Clemson astronomers get new eye on the sky

Published: April 15, 2010

CLEMSON — A telescope in the mountains of Chile will give Clemson astronomers an extra eye on the sky as part of an agreement arranged with 10 American colleges and universities.

The Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA), of which Clemson is a member, has invested about $250,000 to refurbish and upgrade a 0.6-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

The telescope, formerly operated by Lowell Observatory in Arizona and closed in 1996, now will be remotely accessible to the American schools across the Internet.

Through the consortium, Clemson astronomers already have access to a 0.9-meter telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., for part of the year. The addition of the Chilean telescope will allow researchers to view the night skies from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres — sometimes simultaneously — for about 30 days out of the year.

"This telescope has opened the other half of the sky to us," said Dieter Hartmann, a Clemson professor of physics and astronomy.

"The number of telescopes on earth is heavily weighed to the Northern Hemisphere," he said. "There are far fewer in the Southern Hemisphere, so this is particularly exciting."

The size of the tandem telescopes makes them ideal for studying certain high-energy astronomical events.

"There are some projects — binary star systems, for instance, and gamma-ray bursts, which are my research interest — that don't require something like the Hubble space telescope to work with," Hartmann said. "In the case of gamma-ray bursts, these are large explosions, very bright. When there is a burst, you cannot plan it three months in advance. The optical emission doesn't last long, but if you can react fast, you can capture a great deal with these telescopes. The flexibility of working with colleagues in the SARA schools makes this ideal."

In addition to research, the telescope will serve an important instructional role at Clemson, Hartmann said.

"These are research-class telescopes — fully grown — so we're able to use them to expose our undergraduates to astronomy research and to give our graduate students a chance to do observational research, to see if they want to do an observational thesis instead of purely theoretically work," he said. "They serve several roles for us, from entry-level observation for our creative inquiry group of undergrads, right up to full-grown masters theses."

Among those students is Adria Updike, who is reporting results from four years of her SARA research in her dissertation.

"This new telescope will be very useful for a lot of people's research. It will pretty much give us full-sky coverage," Updike said. "I'm studying gamma ray bursts, which are coming from every direction, all over the universe. Only about half can be seen in the Northern Hemisphere. This will allow us to see all of them."

“There are many astrophysically important objects that can only be seen in the southern hemisphere, and there’s an added benefit for the students in working with a telescope in another country,” said Bruce Rafert, vice provost and dean of the graduate school at Clemson.

“This gives them the opportunity to engage in studies with students and faculty internationally, which is especially important in scientific research,” said Rafert, who was the founding director of the SARA observatory when the university joined the consortium in 1999. “Even though the systems are largely robotic, there are still opportunities for engaging with international colleagues and our students are periodically able to make research trips to the telescope sites themselves.”

The 10-member SARA consortium includes Clemson, Agnes Scott College, the University of Alabama, Butler University, Ball State University, East Tennessee State University, the Florida Institute of Technology, Florida International University, Valdosta State University and Valparaiso University.

Alone, none of SARA's members would have been able to acquire and refurbish the telescopes in Chile or Arizona. But together, "the 30 astronomy researchers and 10 institutions that make up SARA form a virtual astronomy department that is as large as many major astronomy departments in the U.S.," said Terry Oswalt, SARA chairman and a Florida Institute of Technology professor.

For roughly the cost of a few nights of viewing on a very powerful telescope, SARA collaborators instead get about 30 days of time a year. All those extra nights of viewing and the addition of a telescope in the Southern Hemisphere open a host of new opportunities to pursue longer-term projects.

The two SARA telescopes are separated by thousands of miles. "In the same way having two eyes gives depth perception, the two SARA telescopes give us the ability to measure distances and orbits for such objects as potentially hazardous asteroids," said Terry Oswalt, head of the Physics and Sciences Department at the Florida Institute of Technology. "In addition, because they are at different longitudes, they allow us to stay focused on an object for more than the 10 or 12 hours typical of one site."  

The group's flexibility is even further improved by their ability to remotely access their telescopes from their labs. Professors and their students can now operate one or both of the telescopes on assigned nights, sometimes changing schedules at the last minute to accommodate unexpected opportunities.

"We can easily trade or share nights in real time," Oswalt said. "If we get what we need, it's not unusual for us to call a colleague to take over in the middle of the night. This type of flexibility just isn't available at more traditional observatories."

That is particularly important to Clemson's Hartmann, who may need to observe gamma ray bursts just minutes after they are reported.

"We may follow a single emission for many hours or days. Some are so bright you can see them with the naked eye. Then, as brightness declines, they are harder to see," he said. "A month later you would have to use Hubble, but if you respond quickly, you take a spectrum and follow the decline.

"This kind of optical followup can be done with remote machines, and our students can be a part of that," Hartmann said. "When that happens, following the observation, reports are submitted and proposals written, and the students are getting real research done."

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