BYU Astronomy Research Group Joins the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC)
As of January 2021 BYU will be a member of the ARC Consortium (Link to Consortium) with access to the ARC 3.5-m telescope and the 0.5-m ARCSAT telescope. The primary use of the ARC 3.5-m telescope time is for graduate student projects. This provides a wide array of instrumentation that is currently being used to study objects in the solar system all the way to studies of the large scale structure of the Universe.
Other BYU Astronomy Facilities
In addition to our telescope time from the ARC consortium, we operate a number of our own astronomical facilities
West Mountain Observatory (West Mountain)
This is our mountain observatory at about 6600 ft above sea level. This consists of three telescopes: 0.9-m, 0.5-m, and a 0.32-m. It is a 40 minute drive that ends in a 5 miles drive up a dirt road. The mountain itself can be seen from campus. We don't provide any tours of this facility.
Orson Pratt Observatory
The Orson Pratt Observatory is named for an early apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is our campus telescope facility and contains a wide variety of telescopes for student research and public outreach. We operate a 24" PlaneWave telescope in the main campus dome, plus a 16", two 12", one 8", and a 6" telescope on our observation deck. The telescopes are all fully robotic. Beyond this we have a large sections of telescopes used on public nights.
Royden G. Derrick Planetarium (Planetarium)
This is a 119 seat, 39" dome planetarium with acoustically treated walls to allow it's use as a lecture room. Recently we upgraded to an E&S Digistar7 operating system with 4K projectors. The planetarium is used for teaching classes, public outreach, and astronomy education research projects.
Selected Publications
We present an analysis of the multiperiodic SX Phoenicis star BL Camelopardalis (GD 428). Along with 24 times of maximum light from archival data, six previously unpublished times of maximum light from photomultiplier observations and 39 new CCD observations of maximum light are reported. The new CCD observations indicate that BL Cam is a double-mode variable with a primary period of 0.0391 day, a secondary period of 0.0306 day, and a pi(1)/pi(0) ratio of 0.783. The relation between metallicity and period ratio for large-amplitude delta Scuti variables is examined in detail. Finally, evidence is presented that the fundamental period pi(0) has increased by 0.009 s in the last 20 years.
The GOLDHELOX Project is a student run project to construct a robotic solar telescope that will be used to take images of the sun in the soft X-ray region (171181Å) of the spectrum. The optical system uses a microchannel plate (MCP) detector. We tested the MCP to familiarize ourselves with and verify that MCP's can be used to image soft X-rays. Soft X-rays were created by a Manson source attached to a proportional counter to determine the amount of emitted X-rays detected by the MCP. The voltages on the MCP were varied to observe responses of varying voltage differences. Most of the observations were visible observations along with images made by a 35 mm camera with a telephoto lens. We found the 1000 V difference to produce the strongest and clearest images.
NASA G-133, also known as the "GoldHelox Project", is a fully autonomous, soft X-ray, solar telescope designed for use on board the space shuttle. Conceived, designed and built by students at Brigham Young University, it will image the sun with a spatial resolution of 2.5 arc-seconds with a temporal resolution of one second. The instrument will image X-rays with wavelengths between 171Å and 181Å coming from highly ionized Fe lines in the sun's corona. Data will consist of several hundred high resolution photographs that will help in understanding the initial phases of solar flares, and the relationship between solar flares and the physics of the coronal-chromospheric transition region. This paper briefly outlines the project's goals, gives a brief overview of the construction and operation of the instrument and addresses the unique aspects of running a predominantly undergraduate research project. It summarizes the lessons learned to date, and the current project status.