2020/12/17 by Juliana García‐Mejía, David Charbonneau, García-Mejía, Juliana +11 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Image Processing Techniques and Applications #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.09744
openalex publication_date 2020/12/17 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We report on the status of the Tierras Observatory, a refurbished 1.3-m\nultra-precise fully-automated photometer located at the F. L. Whipple\nObservatory atop Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. Tierras is designed to limit systematic\nerrors, notably precipitable water vapor (PWV), to 250 ppm, enabling the\ncharacterization of terrestrial planet transits orbiting < 0.3 , R odot\nstars, as well as the potential discovery of exo-moons and exo-rings. The\ndesign choices that will enable our science goals include: a four-lens focal\nreducer and field-flattener to increase the field-of-view of the telescope from\na 11.94' to a 0.48\∘ side; a custom narrow bandpass (40.2 nm FWHM)\nfilter centered around 863.5 nm to minimize PWV errors known to limit\nground-based photometry of red dwarfs; and a deep-depletion 4K \× 4K CCD\nwith a 300ke-full well and QE>85 % in our bandpass, operating in frame\ntransfer mode. We are also pursuing the design of a set of baffles to minimize\nthe significant amount of scattered light reaching the image plane. Tierras\nwill begin science operations in early 2021.\n