NSF Award
2405281
A 3-year research program led by investigators at the University of Arizona will extend the reach of ground-based astronomy into the near-ultraviolet (NUV) by utilizing an ultraviolet-optimized camera located at a top astronomy site to observe supernovae, the cataclysmic deaths of massive stars. Long the exclusive domain of costly and competitive space missions, the UV has had limited contributions to the study of the explosive deaths of stars. The UV emission from supernovae is a sensitive probe of the density and types of metals in the debris of stellar explosions. The team will support existing space UV telescopes, most notably the NASA Swift mission, but will also extend the science by being devoted to following transients and providing critical NUV follow-up. In the interest of maximizing scientific output and guaranteeing maximum inclusiveness, the team will freely accept targets from the entire astronomy community, as well as provide analyzed data products to all astronomers. By providing undergraduate students with hands-on experience in commissioning a UV camera on a robotic telescope, the program will be training the next generation of instrumental astronomers. <br/><br/>Transient astronomy has grown considerably with the development of wide field-of-view detectors and the advent of true multi-messenger triggers of new events. The NUV wavelength range provides important information for transient science, as it reaches closer to the peak emission from these energetic explosions and disruptions. Additionally, the NUV is a wavelength range highly affected by absorption from iron-peak elements, so key information about the event is encoded in the evolution of the UV brightness. There is a need for new systems to observe transients in the NUV during the post-Swift era. Space-based missions are expensive and competitive. The team is adapting an existing telescope to be the first of a ground-based network of telescopes (NUTRANS) that could accomplish a large fraction of NUV science for orders of magnitude less cost. The key components of these telescopes will be a NUV CCD camera that reaches 200nm without a drop-off in transmission combined with filters sensitive to 300nm. This program will regularly add NUV information to multi-wavelength studies of transients. The system will accept sources from the worldwide transient surveys and provide real-time photometry of targets.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
