LBT: Large Binocular Telescope

[hstarbuck]

As far as I can tell, the Large Binocular Telescope is not currently running at 100%. I thought we would be seeing more APOD's (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080216.html with amazing images from the telescope, but even when I visit the site it seems there are not many pictures in binocular mode. Here is a link to one that is too big to embed:
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/image ... 770_01.jpg
I do my research quickly at times and may miss stuff, but I have not found my answers on the site http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/. Here is the most recent news I could find:

January 2010

● Heavy snow (1.3 m in a single storm) slowed mountain operations during January.

● The six modified hardpoints were installed in the DX primary mirror cell. These will improve the resolution and repeatability of the primary mirror positioning.

● The first adaptive optics system passed its laboratory acceptance test in December 2009, and is being packed and shipped to Arizona.

● LUCIFER Science Demonstration Time observations were carried out in December 2009. LUCIFER will now join the two prime focus cameras in the stable of science instruments being used two weeks per month.

So I guess my questions are:
Is everything going as planned?
When will we be amazed by images from the LBT?
Is it just a case of the adaptive optics to be dialed in? (As if this is so easy haha)

[neufer]

When will we be amazed by images from the LBT?

• 

<<LUCIFER: (LBT Near Infrared Spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research) is the near-infrared instrument for the LBT, operating in the 0.9 - 2.5 µm spectral range. LUCIFER provides imaging and spectroscopic capabilities in seeing- and diffraction limited modes. In its focal plane area, long-slit and multi-slit masks can be installed for single- and multi-object spectroscopy. A fixed collimator produces an image of the entrance aperture in which either a mirror (for imaging) or a grating can be positioned. Three camera optics with numerical apertures of 1.8, 3.75 and 30 provide image scales of 0.25, 0.12, and 0.015 arcsec/detector element for wide field, seeing-limited and diffraction-limited observations. Like all infrared instruments, LUCIFER is operated at cryogenic temperatures, and is therefore enclosed in a cryostat and cooled down to about -200 C by two closed cycle coolers.>>

Playing devil's advocate, though...

<<Mephistophilis is a demon which Doctor Faustus conjures up while first using his magical powers. Readers initially feel sympathy for the demon when he attempts to dissuade Faustus from giving his soul to LUCIFER. Mephistophilis gives Faustus a description of hell and the continuous horrors it possesses. He wants Faustus to know what he is getting himself into before going through with the plan:

• “Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God
  And tasted the eternal joy of heaven
  Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
  In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
  O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands
  Which strikes a terror to my fainting soul!”

Sadly, his attempts fail with Faustus believing that supernatural powers were worth more than a lifetime in hell. “Say he (Faustus) surrender up to him (LUCIFER) his soul So he will spare him four and twenty years, Letting him live in all voluptuousness Having thee (Mephistophilis) ever to attend on me” Faustus can be likened to Icarus, whose insatiable ambition was the source of his misery and the cause of his plight.>>

[bystander]

Making the invisible visible
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy - 21 Apr 2010

New workhorse for the world’s largest optical telescope

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) partners in Germany, the U.S.A. and Italy are pleased to announce that the first of two new innovative near-infrared cameras/spectrographs for the LBT is now available to astronomers for scientific observations at the telescope on Mt. Graham in south-eastern Arizona. After more than a decade of design, manufacturing and testing, the new instrument, dubbed LUCIFER 1, provides a powerful tool to gain spectacular insights into the universe, from the Milky Way up to extremely distant galaxies. LUCIFER 1 has been built by a consortium of German institutes and will be followed by an identical twin instrument that will be delivered to the telescope in early 2011.

LUCIFER’s innovative design allows astronomers to observe in unprecedented detail, for example, star forming regions which are commonly hidden by dust clouds. The instrument provides unrivaled flexibility, with features such as a unique robotic arm that can replace spectroscopic masks within the instrument’s extreme sub-zero environment.

LUCIFER and its twin are mounted at the focus points of the LBT’s two giant 8.4-metre (27.6 foot) diameter telescope mirrors. Each instrument is cooled to a chilly -213 degrees Celsius in order to observe in the near-infrared (NIR) wavelength range. Near-infrared observations are essential for understanding the formation of stars and planets in our galaxy as well as revealing the secrets of the most distant and very young galaxies.

• Fig. 1: A snapshot of a stellar nursery in our home galaxy, the Milky Way: a high-mass star forming region inside the giant molecular cloud S255, about 8,000 light-years away from Earth (1 light-year is roughly 10 trillion kilometers). Such clouds are typically opaque to visible light. However, infrared light can penetrate the dust, so that the LUCIFER image reveals the cluster of newly born stars and its complex environment in all their splendour. (Arjan Bik)

• Fig. 2: The faint irregular dwarf galaxy NGC 1569, located 6.2 million light-years from Earth. This galaxy contains several large stellar clusters with episodic star formation at a rate of more than 100 times faster than we observe in our own galaxy. In visible light, the core of the galaxy shows only three large stellar clusters, each containing more than one million stars. With LUCIFER it became possible to peer through the cosmic dust and to reveal many more compact star forming regions. (Anna Pasquali)

[bystander]

LUCIFER Allows Astronomers to Watch Stars Being Born
University of Arizona - 21 April 2010

A new instrument for the world's largest optical telescope, the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, allows astronomers to observe the faintest and most distant objects in the universe. A UA professor directs the LBT collaboration.

Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) partners in the U.S, Germany and Italy announced April 21 that the first of two new innovative near-infrared cameras/spectrographs for the LBT is now available to astronomers for scientific observations at the telescope on Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona.

After more than a decade of design, manufacturing and testing, the new instrument – dubbed LUCIFER 1 – provides a powerful tool to gain spectacular insights into the universe – from the Milky Way to extremely distant galaxies. LUCIFER, built by a consortium of German institutes, will be followed by an identical twin instrument that will be delivered to the telescope in early 2011.

"With the large light-gathering power of the LBT, astronomers are now able to collect the spectral fingerprints of the faintest and most distant objects in the universe," said LBT director Richard Green, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory.

LUCIFER 1 and its twin are mounted at the focus points of the LBT's two giant 8.4-meter (27.6 foot) diameter telescope mirrors. Each instrument is cooled to -213 degrees Celsius in order to observe in the near-infrared wavelength range. Near-infrared observations are essential for understanding the formation of stars and planets in our galaxy as well as revealing the secrets of the most distant and very young galaxies.

LUCIFER's innovative design allows astronomers to observe in unprecedented detail, for example star forming regions, which are commonly hidden by dust clouds.

The instrument is remarkably flexible, combining a large field of view with a high resolution. It provides three exchangeable cameras for imaging and spectroscopy in different resolutions according to observational requirements.

Astronomers use spectroscopy to analyze incoming light and answer questions such as how stars and galaxies formed and what they are made of.

[bystander]

LBT Achieves Breakthrough with Adaptive Optics
Large Binocular Telescope Observatory - 15 June 2010

New Technology Brings Space Telescope Image Quality Down to
Earth, Offering Astronomical Image Clarity Never Seen Before

The next generation of adaptive optics has arrived at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, providing astronomers with a new level of image sharpness never before seen. Developed in a collaboration between Italy’s Arcetri Observatory of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, this technology represents a remarkable step forward for astronomy.

Until relatively recently, ground-based telescopes had to live with wavefront distortion caused by the Earth’s atmosphere that significantly blurred the images of distant objects (this is why stars appear to twinkle to the human eye). While there have been advancements in adaptive optics technology to correct atmospheric blurring, the LBT’s innovative system truly takes this concept to a whole new level.

In closed-dome tests beginning May 12 and sky tests every night since May 25, astronomer Simone Esposito and his INAF team tested the new device, achieving exceptional results. The LBT’s adaptive optics system, called the First Light Adaptive Optics system (FLAO), immediately outperformed all other comparable systems, delivering an image quality greater than three times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope using just one of the LBT’s two 8.4 meter mirrors. When the adaptive optics are in place for both mirrors and their light is combined appropriately, it is expected that the LBT will achieve image sharpness ten times that of the Hubble.

[hstarbuck]

Image sharpness 10 times that of Hubble!!! I can't wait--hope it all goes as planned.

[bystander]

Double vision: New instrument casts its eyes to the sky
NASA JPL | Planet Quest | 06 Dec 2010

Left: The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) at Mt. Graham, Arizona. Right: First light image taken by the LBT Interferometer, which can search for dust and large exoplanets around nearby stars.

---

The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer has taken its first images of the star Beta Peg in the constellation Pegasus -- an encouraging start for an instrument designed to probe the cosmic neighborhoods where Earth-like planets could exist.

Eight years in development, the NASA-funded instrument combines beams of light from twin 8.4-meter (28-foot) mirrors mounted atop the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, Ariz. "By combining the light of the telescopes, we're able to realize its full potential," said Project Manager Tom McMahon of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "Together, the two mirrors form the largest single-mount telescope in the world."

"The quality of the first-light images is wonderful," said the principal investigator for the project, Phil Hinz of the University of Arizona. "The telescope was stable and the instrument was working properly."

With this high-resolution imaging capability, astronomers hope to probe nearby solar systems -- specifically, the areas in these systems where Earth-like planets with liquid water could exist. Though the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer won't be able to detect Earth-size planets, it will be able to see dust disks that are indicative of planet formation, in addition to detecting large, Jupiter-size planets farther out from the star. These findings will help future, space-based exoplanet missions know where to search for Earth-like planets in our own galactic neighborhood.

With its ability to probe this "habitable zone" of other solar systems, the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer will also complement the capabilities of other NASA missions -- the Keck Interferometer, which can find dust very close to stars; and the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is adept at observing planet-forming dust that is much more distant.

[neufer]

Scheat (SHEE-at) / Beta Pegasi

<<Scheat (SHEE-at) derives from the Arabic - either from Al Sa'id, meaning "The Upper Arm" or from Sa'd, meaning lucky or fortunate. Related names are Sheat or Seat Alpheras ("Alpheras here is derived from the Arabic Al Faras, "The Horse." Another name for the star is Menkib from Mankib al Faras, "The Horse's Shoulder."

Scheat is a cool, red M2.5II-III bright giant or normal giant having a luminosity about 340 times that of the sun.

Burnham lists the diameter of the star as 0.021 arc seconds, which would correspond to 1.3 AU or 280 times the diameter of the sun. Burnham assesses the effective temperature of the star as 3100 K and the mass as five times that of the sun. According to Burnham the star is an irregular variable whose Apparent Magnitude varies between 2.1 and 3.0 with an irregular period.>>

Double vision: New instrument casts its eyes to the sky
NASA JPL | Planet Quest | 06 Dec 2010

Left: The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) at Mt. Graham, Arizona. Right: First light image taken by the LBT Interferometer, which can search for dust and large exoplanets around nearby stars.

---

The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer has taken its first images of the star Beta Peg in the constellation Pegasus -- an encouraging start for an instrument designed to probe the cosmic neighborhoods where Earth-like planets could exist.

Eight years in development, the NASA-funded instrument combines beams of light from twin 8.4-meter (28-foot) mirrors mounted atop the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, Ariz. "By combining the light of the telescopes, we're able to realize its full potential," said Project Manager Tom McMahon of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "Together, the two mirrors form the largest single-mount telescope in the world."

"The quality of the first-light images is wonderful," said the principal investigator for the project, Phil Hinz of the University of Arizona. "The telescope was stable and the instrument was working properly."