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The Ohio State University Astronomy Department Columbus, Ohio 43210 1 The Ohio State University Astronomy Department Columbus, Ohio 43210 ͓S0002-7537͑93͒24241-X͔ This annual report covers the period 2000 September Juna Kollmeier, Grant Newsham, Josh Pepper, and Rik Wil- through 2001 August. liams. Students completing their Ph.D. were Berlind ͑now at U. Chicago͒, Conti ͑now at U. Pittsburgh͒, and Stephens ͑now 1. PERSONNEL at Princeton/Universidad Catolica͒. During the period covered by this report, the regular aca- demic staff of the Department of Astronomy included Rich- ard Boyd, Darren DePoy, Jay Frogel, Andrew Gould, Eric Herbst, Jordi Miralda-Escude´, Gerald Newsom, Patrick Os- 2. TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION mer ͑chairman͒, Bradley Peterson, Marc Pinsonneault, Rich- OSU has a one-quarter share of the observing time on the ard Pogge, Anil Pradhan, Barbara Ryden, Robert Scherrer, 2.4m and 1.3m telescopes of MDM Observatory on Kitt Kristen Sellgren, Gary Steigman, Donald Terndrup, Terrance Peak. The other MDM partners are Dartmouth University, Walker, David Weinberg, and Robert Wing. Since March Columbia University, and the University of Michigan. OSU 2001, Frogel has been on leave at the Lawrence Berkeley is also a partner in and will have one sixth of the observing Laboratory, where he is a Visiting Senior Research Scientist time on the Large Binocular Telescope ͑LBT͒, which is un- in the Physics Division. der construction at the Mt. Graham International Observa- Michele Kaufman and Smita Mathur held appointments tory in Arizona. Other partners in the project are the Univer- as Research Scientists, and David Ennis and Eric Monier sity of Arizona, astronomical consortia in Italy and Germany, were lecturers. Sultana Nahar was a senior research associ- and the Research Corporation. ate. Emeritus members of the Astronomy Department are The LBT, with twin 8.4m mirrors, will be the world’s Eugene Capriotti, George Collins II, Stanley Czyzak, Geof- largest telescope on a single mount and will have a 23m frey Keller, and William Protheroe. baseline for interferometric observations. During the last The staff of the Imaging Sciences Laboratory ͑ISL͒ in- year, polishing was begun on the first primary mirror, and the cluded Bruce Atwood, Ralph Belville, David Brewer, Paul telescope structure was assembled at the Ansaldo-Camozzi Byard, Jerry Mason, Thomas O’Brien, Daniel Pappalardo, plant in Milan. The exterior and interior finishing work on David Steinbrecher, and Edward Teiga. Mark Derwent has the enclosure on Mt. Graham is nearly complete, and plans joined the ISL as a mechanical engineer. Michael Savage are being made for the transportation of the telescope com- was manager of the Astronomy Department computer re- ponents to the U.S. Work continued on the aluminizing sys- sources. tem for the telescope, for which the department is largely In Tucson, AZ, Mark Wagner held the position of Re- responsible. Initial tests of the large vacuum system went search Scientist, while Ray Bertram was Research Associate. well, as did tests of some prototypes. The aluminizing bell Wagner and Bertram are assigned full-time to work on the jar and dummy mirror cell will be shipped to Columbus, Large Binocular Telescope ͑LBT͒ project. Wagner is Instru- where ISL staff will install the equipment needed for the mentation Scientist for the LBT, coordinating the instrumen- aluminizing system. First light for the LBT is currently tation efforts of the LBT partners and developing instrument scheduled for 2004. support on the mountain. The project to construct a multi-object double spec- Postdoctoral researchers in Astronomy during part or all trograph ͑MODS͒ for the LBT is progressing. The project of this period included James Bullock, Stefan Collier, Paul passed its Preliminary Design Review in May 2001 with Eskridge, David Graff, Andrey Kravtsov ͑Hubble Fellow͒, flying colors and is now proceeding into construction. The Eric Monier, and Marianne Vestergaard ͑Columbus Fellow͒. optics design is complete, and contracts are being negotiated Graduate students in the Astronomy Department during for optics fabrication. A number of prototypes of complex the academic year included Khairul Alam, Jin An, Nikolay components ͑for instance, the grating turret and corrector Andronov, Andreas Berlind, Christopher Burke, Julio Chan- lens cells͒ have been produced. Prototypes of the grating tilt ame´, Guo-Xin Chen, Alberto Conti, Franck Delahaye, Dale mechanism have been successfully tested. Barring unfore- Fields, Susan Kassin, Jennifer Marshall, Christopher Onken, seen difficulties, the Phase 1 MODS instrument ͑a single James Pizagno, Patrizia Romano, Samir Salim, Adam Steed, blue-channel spectrometer͒ will be delivered to the LBT in Andrew Stephens, Jeremy Tinker, and Zheng Zheng. Justin time for mirror 1 first light. Details on MODS progress are Oelgoetz is an OSU Chemical Physics graduate student available at www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/LBT/MODS. working on his Ph.D. thesis with Pradhan. Jennifer Marshall Pogge configured a small CCD camera for the Crim-ean was the first recipient of the David G. Price Fellowship in Astrophysical Observatory. The system included an Apogee Astronomical Instrumentation, endowed by OSU alumnus AP7p CCD, control computer, and power management sys- David Price to foster the training of a new generation of tem, with documentation. The camera will be used on the instrument builders in astronomy. CrAO 0.6m telescope for photometric monitoring of active Graduate students arriving in the summer of 2001 were galactic nuclei and variable stars. 2 ANNUAL REPORT We also continued to support and maintain existing instru- supergiants of type M are easily distinguished on the basis of ments, including OSIRIS and ANDICAM at Cerro Tololo their CN strengths. As a first application of the new filters, Inter-American Observatory in Chile, DANDICAM at the Wing is obtaining two-dimensional classifications for red South African Astronomical Observatory in South Africa, stars in the northern Milky Way, suspected of being reddened and TIFKAM and CCDS at MDM Observatory in Arizona. late-type supergiants in the Case objective-prism surveys conducted by J. J. Nassau, V. M. Blanco, and colleagues 3. SOLAR SYSTEM & PLANETS more than 40 years ago. Most of these stars have not been Wagner, in collaboration with R. Millis, M. Buie, and L. studied – or even confirmed as supergiants – since the origi- Wasserman ͑Lowell͒, and J. Elliot and S. Kern ͑MIT͒,is nal survey work. However, since distances can be deter- continuing a project to detect faint Kuiper Belt Objects mined for M stars with two-dimensional ͑TiO, CN͒ classifi- ͑KBOs͒, using the MOSAIC CCD cameras at the Mayall and cations, these stars have potential for adding to our Blanco 4m telescopes. An extension of this investigation, knowledge of the arrangement of the spiral arms of the Gal- called the Deep Ecliptic Survey and including Co-I’s E. axy. Wing is also attempting to identify fainter and more Chiang ͑UCB͒ and D. Trilling ͑U. Penn.͒, was recently ap- distant late-type supergiants through deep V,I imaging and proved as an NOAO Survey Program. The program seeks to follow-up narrow-band photometry of red candidates. undertake a deep survey of the ecliptic to learn the dimen- Pinsonneault and Terndrup, in collaboration with A. Sills, sions, content, and dynamical characteristics of the Kuiper R. Jeffries ͑Keele͒, and J. Stauffer ͑IPAC͒, have been obtain- Belt. The product of this survey will be a publicly accessible ing new data on stellar rotation rates (vsini) in young and database of ϳ500 new KBOs, with well-understood and intermediate-age stellar clusters. Their first effort was in readily quantified biases. The initial results of the survey, NGC 2516, a cluster about as old as the Pleiades ͑120 Myr͒, using observations obtained between 1998 October and 2000 but more metal-poor by ϳ0.3 dex. They have also obtained February, have been accepted for publication. Sixty-nine an extensive sample of stars in the intermediate-age clusters KBOs and Centaurs with Rϭ20.6Ϫ24 mag were discovered. NGC 752 and NGC 2420, prototype clusters for the calibra- The preliminary results suggest that the relative frequency of tion of convective overshoot in stellar evolutionary models, objects as a function of ecliptic longitude is not symmetric and in NGC 5822 ͑also in collaboration with S. Hawley, about the longitude of Neptune. The observed distribution of MSU͒. When complete, these data will provide the first look orbital inclinations suggests that the true distribution is simi- at the effects of metallicity on angular momentum evolution, lar to that of short-period comets. In 2000 July, the team and will yield important calibrating data for the production announced the discovery of the intrinsically brightest KBO of giant branch models which properly treat rotationally in- yet found. 2001 KX76 was discovered on images obtained duced mixing and dredgeup. by Elliot and Wasserman with the Blanco 4m. Assuming an With new NSF funding, R. Peterson ͑Lick Obs.͒ and Tern- albedo of 4Ϫ7 percent, 2001 KX76 would have a diameter drup are undertaking an extensive survey to find and charac- of ϳ1100 km, comparable to Pluto’s moon Charon. Further terize hot horizontal-branch stars in the nuclear bulge of our observations, including thermal IR observations to determine Galaxy. Such stars have been suggested as the source for the its albedo and size, are planned for next year. copious ultraviolet emission from ellipticals and other spiral Miralda-Escude´ investigated the possibility of detecting bulges, but there do not yet exist significant samples for small perturbations to the orbit of an extrasolar planet with study in bulge-like environments. During Summer 2001, observed transits. Such perturbations might be caused by the they obtained extremely deep imaging with the MOSAIC quadrupole moment of the star or by the gravitational influ- camera on the Blanco 4m telescope, revealing the presence ence of a second planet with a mass as low as an Earth mass.
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