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The Ohio State University Astronomy Department Columbus, Ohio 43210 The Ohio State University Astronomy Department Columbus, Ohio 43210 Abstract Zheng Zheng. Justin Oelgoetz is an OSU Chemical This annual report covers the period 2002 September Physics graduate student working on his Ph.D. thesis through 2003 August. with Pradhan. The Masters Degree was awarded to Fields, Mar- 1 PERSONNEL shall, and Onken. During the period covered by this report, the regu- Osmer represents OSU on the Board of Directors lar academic staff of the Department of Astronomy in- of the Large Binocular Telescope Corporation. He is cluded Richard Boyd, Darren DePoy, Jay Frogel, An- a member of the Publications Board of the American drew Gould, Eric Herbst, Smita Mathur, Jordi Miralda- Astronomical Society and also serves on the Board of Escud´e, Gerald Newsom, Patrick Osmer (chairperson), Directors of Research Corporation. Bradley Peterson, Marc Pinsonneault, Richard Pogge, Peterson completed a term as a member of the NASA Anil Pradhan, Barbara Ryden, Robert Scherrer, Kris- Structure and Evolution of the Universe Subcommittee. ten Sellgren, Gary Steigman, Donald Terndrup, Terrance He continues to serve as a member of the Astronomy Walker, and David Weinberg. In addition, Christopher and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), which Kochanek has been appointed Ohio Eminent Scholar in was established by Congress to facilitate greater coop- the Department of Astronomy, starting October 1, 2003. eration between the National Science Foundation and Boyd was on leave, serving in the Physics Division of NASA. Peterson is OSU’s institutional representative to the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. the AURA Board and this year he was elected to the as Program Director for Nuclear Physics and for Par- Space Telescope Institute Council (STIC). ticle and Nuclear Astrophysics. Frogel was on leave at Sellgren began service on the SOFIA Science Coun- NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. cil, and served on the Scientific Organizing Committees Michele Kaufman and Sultana Nahar held appoint- for Galactic Center 2002 (Kona, HI, November 2002) and ments as Research Scientist, and David Ennis and Eric Astrophysics of Dust (Estes Park, CO, May 2003). She Monier were Lecturers. Emeritus members of the is also a member of the search committee for the Deputy Astronomy Department are Eugene Capriotti, George Director for the U.S. National Gemini Science Council. Collins II, Stanley Czyzak, Geoffrey Keller, William Pro- 2 TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION theroe, and Robert Wing. The staff of the Imaging Sciences Laboratory (ISL) OSU has a one-quarter share of the observing time included Bruce Atwood, Ralph Belville, David Brewer, on the 2.4-m and 1.3-m telescopes of MDM Observatory Paul Byard, Mark Derwent, Jerry Mason, Thomas O’- on Kitt Peak. The other MDM partners are Dartmouth Brien, Daniel Pappalardo, David Steinbrecher, and Ed- University, Columbia University, and the University of ward Teiga. Michael Savage was manager of the Astron- Michigan. OSU is also a partner in the Large Binocu- omy Department computer resources. lar Telescope (LBT), which is under construction at the In Tucson, AZ, Mark Wagner held the position of Mt. Graham International Observatory in Arizona, and Research Scientist, while Ray Bertram was Research As- will have one-sixth of its observing time. Other part- sociate. Wagner and Bertram are assigned to work full- ners in the LBT project are the University of Arizona, time on the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) project. astronomical consortia in Italy and Germany, and the Wagner is Instrumentation Scientist for the LBT, coor- Research Corporation. dinating the instrumentation efforts of the LBT partners The LBT, with twin 8.4-m mirrors, will be the and developing instrument support on the mountain. world’s largest telescope on a single mount and will have Postdoctoral researchers in Astronomy during part a 22.8-m baseline for inteferometric observations. Dur- or all of this period were David Graff, Dirk Grupe, Eric ing the last year, the polishing of the first primary mirror Monier, and Marianne Vestergaard (Columbus Fellow). was completed at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab- Graduate students in the Astronomy Department oratory, and the mirror is being integrated into its cell. during the academic year included Deokkun An, Niko- Figuring work on the back side of the second primary has lay Andronov, Misty Bentz, Christopher Burke, Julio begun. The telescope enclosure is complete, and work is Chanam´e, Guo-Xin Chen, Franck Delahaye, Dale Fields, well along on assembling the telescope structure. Fab- Stephan Frank, Angela Hanson, Susan Kassin, Juna rication of the first adaptive secondary is being done in Kollmeier, Jennifer Marshall, Christopher Morgan, Grant both Arizona and Italy. The prime focus camera is be- Newsham, Christopher Onken, Josh Pepper, James Piza- ing completed in Italy. First light with the prime focus gno, Adam Steed, Jeremy Tinker, Rik Williams, and camera and the first primary is planned for the summer of 2004. 1 OSU is providing the aluminizing system as part of obtain metallicity estimates. These estimates are used its in-kind contribution to the LBT. During the year the to select ideal clusters for planet searches, as well as dummy mirror cell and vacuum bell jar were unpacked adding more accurate metallicity measurements to the and set up in rented hangar space at Rickenbacker air- literature. port near Columbus. The mechanical pumps were rein- Gould, Pepper, and DePoy have considered the sen- stalled and the O-ring assembly was cleaned. Tests show sitivity of transit searches to habitable-zone planets. that the pumps and vacuum seal are performing well. Photon-limited transit surveys in the V band are in prin- The cryogenic panels for producing high vacuum were ciple about 20 times more sensitive to planets of fixed fabricated and installed, and first tests show that the size in the habitable zone around M stars than G stars. overall system achieves the required vacuum level. The In the I band the ratio is about 400. The advantages design of the boron nitride crucibles was completed and a of a closer habitable zone and smaller stars (together prototype unit was built and tested; then the remaining with the numerical superiority of M stars) more than crucible assemblies were fabricated. The design of the compensate for the reduced signal because of the lower electrical power distribution system was completed and luminosity of the later-type stars. That is, M stars can its fabrication and installation are nearing completion. yield reliable transit detections at much fainter appar- A first test of the system with four crucibles has been ent magnitudes than G stars. However, to achieve this carried out. The remaining crucibles are to be installed greater sensitivity, the later-type stars must be moni- and tested during autumn, 2003. tored to these correspondingly fainter magnitudes, which The instrumentation group continued to work on can engender several practical problems. They show that the Multi-Object Double Spectrograph (MODS) for the with modest modifications, the Kepler mission could ex- LBT. Key milestones met in the past year were procur- tend its effective sensitivity from its current MV =6to ing the first large optics and ordering the large structural 9. This would not capture the whole M dwarf peak but framework for the instrument. There was also substan- would roughly triple its sensitivity to Earth-like planets tial work on the various mechanisms, control software, in the habitable zone. To take advantage of the huge and a system to compensate for any flexure and other bump in the sensitivity function at MV = 12 would re- image motions for the instrument. quire major changes in Kepler. However, the reduced The instrumentation group also worked on general photometric-precision requirements at MV = 12 makes maintenance and repair of existing instruments at MDM a search for these transits possible from the ground. Pho- Observatory and CTIO. In particular, ANDICAM (a tometric stability requirements are much less severe for camera capable of simultaneous imaging at optical and M stars than G stars. To detect Earth-mass planets in near-infrared wavelengths) was moved to the CTIO (ex- the habitable zone around G stars, the variability on 2MASS) 1.3-m telescope and returned to nightly opera- transit timescales must be less than 2 × 10−5, but for tions as part of the SMARTS consortium. Work also con- middle M stars the limit is 1.2 × 10−3. tinued on upgrading the detector array in the MDM facil- Pepper, Gould, and Depoy have proposed an all-sky ity near-infrared camera and spectrograph (TIFKAM). survey to find planetary transits. Transits of bright stars DePoy, Gould, and Pepper are building the 2-in (5- offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties cm) Kilo-square-degree Extremely Little Telescope of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through (KELT), which will carry out a 2π steradian search for radial-velocity observations. They propose a new tech- planetary transits to V = 10. nique to find such systems using all-sky small-aperture Marshall has been developing the Image Motion transit surveys. They derive a general formula for the Compensation System (IMCS) for MODS, and has pro- number of stars that can be probed for such systems as duced results within specifications for flexure compensa- a function of the characteristics of the star, the planet, tion in the lab prototype of the IMCS. and the survey. They use this formula to derive the op- Marshall and Kollmeier, with DePoy, have been con- timal telescope design for finding transits of bright stars: tinuing work on two filter wheels that will be going to a1 to 2 (2.5-cm to 5-cm) “telescope” with a 4k × 4k the MDM and YALO observatories. The first of these is camera. scheduled for commissioning at MDM in December 2003.
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