September 18, 2010, La Palma, Canary Islands
An ocean away, on top of a tall mountain overlooking the Atlantic and the clouds far below, we finally arrive at the world’s largest telescope, the Gran Telescopio Canarias (Grantecan). The University of Florida team, led by Professor Charles Telesco, is here to officially commission its new mid-infrared camera, the CanariCam, specially designed to work in conjunction with Grantecan to explore regions of space normally inaccessible to visible light.
Internationally known for its expertise in designing, building and using high end astronomical instrumentation on some of the world’s largest telescopes, the University of Florida will install CanariCam on the business end of the 500 ton telescope facility, which uses a segmented mirror 34 feet across (over twice as large as the iconic Mt. Palomar 200 inch telescope in California). With what amounts to the largest eye on the planet, the heat sensitive CanariCam will be able to peer through obscuring interstellar dust with unprecedented accuracy, looking, for example, at the center of galaxies hiding black holes, or looking for exoplanets (planets outside our own solar system) in the process of forming around young stars.
First,however,the complicated instrument, as large as a coffee table, and hooked to closet-sized electronic cabinets, has to be checked out to make sure it is ready for installation and use. And that can get hairy. In order, for example, for the camera to detect the extremely faint emissions from distant heat sources, it has to eliminate as much as possible the heat being generated closer to home, the camera housing itself and the very telescope it is using. In addition, it has to peer through the heavy humid atmosphere of Earth.
In order to accomplish this, the infrared detector at the heart of the camera must be cooled to around 8 Kelvin (that’s -445 degrees Fahrenheit). But the new two stage cryogenic “coldhead,” which allows it to achieve such frigid temperatures, is giving the team fits. Switching back to an older coldhead unit, everyone is anxiously watching the monitors as the slow process of cooldown is underway. The laborious process should be completed by Sunday, at which time the instrument can be checked out and, if everything goes well, readied for installation on the telescope.
Astronomers from around the world are waiting, their proposals for using the unique instrument dependent upon a successful commissioning. These proposals include new examinations of protoplanetary and debris disks around young stars (potentially letting us observe the formation of new planetary systems), and penetrating the interior of active galactic nuclei, obscured by dust in the visible spectrum.
For an amateur astronomer like me, living temporarily in an astronomical community and working in a laboratory sitting beneath such a magnificent telescope, I keep waiting for someone to wake me up. “What are you doing here?” I hope to document this exciting activity in pictures and in this blog, hopefully giving a sense of being amidst science at the cutting edge. Each day for the next week I will post observations and photos, following the progress of the Florida team, explaining infrared astronomy in further detail, and looking more closely at the capabilities of CanariCam.
Terry Smiljanich
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