AITC News

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue25 1–28 February 2022

Captain’s log, Stardate 2022.08. On the surface of planet earth the Australian Research Council surprised the astronomy community by funding 5 astronomy projects days before Santa beamed presents in every home. So what’s in it for us?

For ANU as a whole this is pretty good news as we are involved in 4 of the 5 projects. The CGA got funds for new equipment and MAVIS is steamrolling forward. What I want to shine some light on, are the two other bids: LSST and Heimdallr

The community support for Australia’s participation to the Legacy Survey of Space and Time has been huge for a while now, and this LIEF success is its culmination. The next decade will be huge for transient astronomy and no one can even guess the crazy discoveries it will make. The AITC has not been blind or unprepared for this decade and is working hand in hand with our SSO colleagues towards a national “transient factory” at Siding Spring Observatory. One of its pieces is the DREAMS telescope which is currently being assembled in the AITC optical lab. We are on track to commission the hardware before the second semester starts. Every day, when LSST goes to sleep, DREAMS will pick up the observations and provide not only new discoveries of its own, but also the infrared counterparts to observations made by LSST and LIGO. As of the writing of this article, PhD student Jamie Soon is unpacking the 48 lenses that make up the core part of the telescope relay to its 6 cameras and summer intern Eric Muller is across the room characterising some of these lenses. It feels good to have reached this stage after months of delays caused by a supply chain that is a shadow of its former self and the many days of lockdown that came with it.

  But one telescope doesn’t exactly qualify as a “factory”. DREAMS and LSST may pick up a lot of transients, the really hard job is to classify them and make sure the data reaches the astronomers. For that, we need fast spectroscopy. With the ANU 2.3m telescope and the WIFES instrument, the hardware already exists. To make it “fast”, Humans and Vulcans must be replaced by Mentats. Thanks to the support from the CGA, a lot has been done in that direction by our own Ian Price and Jon Nielsen. To complete this automation and tie-in the software needed on the DREAMS side, we will go back to the ARC with a LIEF bid this year and hopefully be on time to work with LSST. In parallel, Trevor Mendel is leading the design of a new instrument, WISP, an essential infrared counterpart to WIFES. If we can do all that, we will have a world class facility that will give us a scientific edge over our international competitors and no-doubt attract the best to work with us.

  The second LIEF success lead by Michael Ireland is Heimdallr, a name that my spellchecker hates but we can blame ESO for wanting to keep the Asgardian theme going. My simplistic interpretation of this success is two-fold: We really want to be BFF with ESO and also that interferometry is so hot right now! And that’s good for the AITC once again, not only have we been working with ESO on MAVIS for some time, but we have also one foot in the interferometric door with PYXIS, our prototype for future space interferometric missions. So while we will soon start our work on Heimdallr for which we will contribute the software, PYXIS is at a point where are robots are starting to take shape. One of them will be exposed to star light later this month thanks to the efforts of PhD student Jonah Hansen and a team that is taking on a larger role in the development of “cubesat ready” telescopes for the benefits of the nation and the United Federation of Planets.

The bottom line here is that the AITC has its fingers in many pies, but these are the right pies, with  large support from our community. Our challenge now is to deliver, and to do that, we are in the process of growing our centre. You will see new faces in the building (assuming you guys come back to the office at some point) so keep your eyes open and prosper.

Captain Tony Travouillon

_{Main picture: DREAMS telescope (may require assembly),}

_{Picture: Pixys robot 1 under the care of Summer intern Nicholas Bohlsen}