Lab 11 - Build Your Own Observatory

AST 3930 - Astrophysics Lab

Dr. Alex McCormick

Department of Physics
University of South Florida

1 Goals
The main goal of this lab is to build a hypothetical astronomical observatory based on
parameters determined by one of four observing projects. You will need to investigate your
chosen observing project in order to figure out what features your observatory needs. Make
sure that you take good notes so that you will be able to describe what you did in your
write-up.

2 Background
Before you build any astronomical observatory, you need to have some idea about what
you are interested in observing. Having an observing project and knowing something about
the object or objects you wish to observe will help in determining the features of your ob-
servatory. For example, if you wanted to image the surface features of an asteroid in the
asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, you would likely need to fly a probe to the asteroid
in question in order to get that kind of detail. For most objects in the universe, this kind
of travel is prohibitive due to the literal astronomical distances involved.

Astronomers have come up with a number of different clever strategies to gather as much
information from the universe as they can from distances that cannot be traveled in a rea-
sonable human lifetime. Some of those include imaging, spectroscopy, performing imaging
or spectroscopy at different wavelengths or wavebands across the electromagnetic spectrum,
using interferometry to increase resolution, and surveying large areas of the sky in order to
catch fleeting or rare events, among other techiques.

When deciding what features you need in your observatory you may want to consider some
of these basic proportionalities and equations:
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Luminosity (brightness) drops off as r2
, where r = distance to the source
Light collecting increases as L2 , where L = linear aperture size (usually circular).
Apparent angular diameter () decreases with distance as = rs , where s is the actual
size of the source and r is the distance to the source (in the small angle limit).

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 Angular resolution, = 1.22
D , where is the longest wavelength observed, and D is
the greatest distance between detector elements.

Time how long a does the astronomical phenomenon last or stay the same? If it is
short-lived, then high time resolution (frequent observations) will be required.

Earths atmosphere distorts the light collected by Earth-based observatories. The

best possible resolution is generally described as the seeing of a particular loca-
tion. Earths atmosphere blocks the transmission of certain wavelengths of light.
Some locations typically have more favorable weather than others. The altitude of
the observatory determines how much atmosphere you need to look through as well.
Finally, these atmospheric effects can sometimes be mitigated by using an adaptive
optics system.

Observing Projects
Choose one of the observing projects listed here and build your observatory with that
project in mind.

1. Exoplanet Direct Imaging / Atmospheric Composition

Your observatory must be able to directly image known exoplanets at their typical
orbital radii out to distances of approximately 500 pc from the Solar System. It
must also be able to determine the atmospheric composition (chemical make-up) for
transiting exoplanets.

2. Image Sagittarius A*
Sagittarius A* is the name astronomers give to the location of the supermassive black
hole at the center of the Milky Way. Your observatory must be able to image the
supermassive black hole with enough resolution to show 1/4 the event horizon (or half
the Schwarzschild radius).

3. Map Galaxy Cluster Hot Gas

The galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0658-5556 contains galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter.
Your observatory must be able to image and map the radial velocity of the hot gas
(T 108 K) in the cluster.

4. Find Type Ia Supernovae

Type Ia supernovae have a consistent peak luminosity, making them good standard
candles and thus good distance indicators. Your observatory must be able to detect
multiple type Ia supernovae from ones that may occur in the Milky Way or nearby
galaxies out to galaxies as far away as 1 Gpc.

When choosing a project, think a bit about the proportionalities and equations listed before
the projects.

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3 Procedures
Part 1: Background Research
Do some research into your chosen observing project to get familiar with some of the
challenges involved. Make sure you are reading reputable websites, books, or other sources.
Schlomos Amateur Astrology Webpage is not a reputable source! If you use information
from a webpage, book, or other source, make sure you cite your source(s) in your write-up.

Part 2: Parameter Considerations

Consider and research the following parameters as they apply (or do not apply) to your
chosen observing project. If any of the parameters does not apply to your observations, you
must explain why it does not apply.
Distance
(Q. 1) How far away is your observing target? Express your values in appropriate
units (e.g. AU, pc, kpc, Mpc). If there are a range of values, express your answer as
a range of distances.
Scale
(Q. 2) What is the size of your observing target or the size of the system you need to
observe in order to detect it? Express your values in appropriate units (e.g. AU, pc,
kpc, Mpc).
Wavelength / Waveband ()
(Q. 3) What electromagnetic radiation wavelength or wavelengths will your observa-
tory need to detect in order to perform your observations? Express your value(s) in
appropriate units (e.g. nm, mm, m, etc.). If there are a range of values, express
your answer as a range of wavelengths.
Time
(Q. 4) How long will you need to perform your observations? Make sure you justify
your answer. This could be affected by the intrinsic timescale or frequency of the
target or targets you want to observe. Needing to cover a larger area of the sky
may also lengthen the time needed for observations. If there is a lot of noise from
the background, instruments or both, you will have to increase the timescale of your
observations in order to increase your signal to noise ratio. The signal (S) to noise
(N ) ratio depends approximately on the time of your observations (t) as
S
t
N
Your timescale should not exceed 40 years or so, since observations requiring more
time might extend past the lifetime of the observer!
Luminosity / Brightness
(Q. 5) How bright or luminous is/are your target/targets or any other object you
might use to detect your target indirectly? Express your answer in watts (W) or
Joules per second (J/s).

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Part 3: Building Your Observatory
Now that you have taken into consideration the different important parameters of your
observing project, use them while building your observatory. You may assume you have
an unlimited budget, but your observatory should still be realistic in terms of what can be
built with current technology - no telescope mirrors the size of continents!

1. Location
(Q. 6) Where will your observatory be located? This question has several different
factors which must be considered. You must determine whether the observatory can
be ground-based or needs to be space based, depending on whether the wavelength(s)
you need to observe are blocked by the Earths atmosphere. The necessary resolu-
tion of your observations may also determine whether your observatory needs to be
ground/space-based. In addition, you need to be more specific than just saying on
Earth or in space. Where exactly on Earth would you put such an observatory, or
where in space? Take into account Earths weather as well as space weather (from
the Sun, and other factors). If you observatory is ground-based, how would you po-
tentially get permission to build on that land? The proposed Thirty Meter Telescope
(TMT) was set to be built on Mauna Kea in Hawaii until native Hawaiians essen-
tially shut the project down. Read more: http://bit.ly/2oDQyqd. If your telescope
is space-based, explain in detail how you would get it to its location in space.

2. Resolution
(Q. 7) What resolution does your observatory need? Again, this question requires
consideration of several factors, including how large your target or targets appear
from our vantage point (this will require a calculation), whether you need to resolve
the size of the object or can detect it as a point source (i.e. essentially having no
size on the sky), and what kind of resolution you will need for spectra if they are
necessary for your observations.

3. Field of View
(Q. 8) How large does the field of view of your observatory need to be? That is, your
target or targets must fit within the field of view, or you must be able to observe
multiple targets or multiple directions on the sky with multiple observations over a
reasonable period of time. For example, if your field of view is 1 1, thats not
going to be enough to map a large portion of the sky in a reasonable amount of time.

4. Telescope / Dish / Array (Q. 9) Given your observatorys necessary resolution,

field of view, and the apparent brightness of your target or targets, what kind of
observatory should you build - a telescope, radio dish, an array of telescopes/dishes,
or something else? Include how your observatory collects light - via a mirror, radio
dish, interferometry, etc. and the size or sizes of these physical attributes. Different
wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation will require different types of observatories.

5. Instruments
(Q. 10) What instrument or instruments will you need attached to your observatory
to detect the light it will collect? Describe your instruments in some detail. Different

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 wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation will require different instruments for detec-
tion. Also, your instruments need to be able to match or do better than the resolution
of your observatory!

6. Computing Resources
(Q. 11) Given the data you will collect with your observatory, what kind of data
storage space (gigabytes? terabytes?) will you need to house the data? If you chose
to build a space-based observatory, describe how you will efficiently get the data.

7. Support Staff
(Q. 12) How many people will you need to run your observatory? It certainly wont
be a one-person job! Describe the different categories of support staff you will need
to keep your observatory running and whether they need to be at the observatory or
could possibly work remotely - a problem if youre putting an observatory in space!

8. Budget
(Q. 13) How much will your observatory cost including building costs, staffing it,
keeping it running, etc.? An estimate is fine, but include reasonable costs for all
the different things you need. Provide the budget break-down by item in a table in
addition to the total cost.

4 Write-Up
Please use a word-processing application to produce your write-up, which should contain:

Observing Project: list which project you chose and why you chose it.

Questions: provide your answers to the questions in the Parameter Considerations

and Building Your Observatory sections.

References: include references to any websites you used in your research.

Extra Credit: make a detailed schematic drawing of your observatory (like the one
below) identifying different features.

Also make sure your name, Astrophysics Lab, and the lab title appear at the top of the
first page of your write up.

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