Feature: The SOAR Telescope

With its new venture in the Chilean Andes, MSU leaps to the forefront of astronomical science for years to come.

            Overhead, the skies are as clear as a crystalline sphere. A warm breeze blows across Cerro Pachon, an isolated mountaintop stretching 9,000 feet toward the awe-inspiring twilight skies of the Southern Hemisphere. The sort of night when the stars come out and play, the sort of night when astronomers search the skies for the secrets of the Universe. Cerro Pachon is a perfect site for doing modern observational astronomy, one of a precious few around the world. With the arrival of the SOAR 4.2 meter telescope, Michigan State University will be there, offering scientists, students, and the public a newly opened 'Window on the Universe.'

            'It's the grandest of all human desires to seek knowledge of our beginnings and gain a glimpse into our future,' says Robert Huggett, vice president for Research and Graduate Studies, who visited Cerro Pachon in February 1998 for the groundbreaking ceremonies. 'Our researchers and their collaborators will use the SOAR telescope to explore the rich diversity of phenomena in the Universe beyond planet Earth in the search for answers to those basic questions.'

             'Universities have engaged in astronomical studies for centuries,' says Paul Hunt, vice provost for Libraries, Computing, and Technology, who represents MSU as a member of the SOAR consortium board. 'Today, astronomy is reaping the benefits of the information technology revolution. Now Michigan State can play a key role in a scientific discipline that is making radical strides forward. 'The SOAR telescope project will provide us with unprecedented educational, research, and outreach opportunities. It will also involve MSU faculty investigators in a major international consortium, securing MSU's place in the worldwide astronomical community. In addition, through distance learning technologies, it will benefit Michigan students in the K-12 system, at MSU, and in other colleges around the state.'

            What is SOAR? The SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) project is a consortium of four major astronomy groups, including Michigan State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, and astronomers from the nation of Brazil, whose collective goal is to construct and operate a new-generation 4.2 meter telescope on Cerro Pachon, a remote mountaintop on the westward side of the Chilean Andes mountains some 500 kilometers north of the capital city of Santiago. Chilean astronomers will receive 10 percent of the available observing time. This exciting new facility will provide astronomers at MSU, and elsewhere, a new tool of discovery with which to plumb the depths of the Universe. Astronomy is a unique science. It's simple enough for an elementary school student to understand, but complex enough to challenge our basic, instinctive ideas about how the Universe works and where we fit within it. 

            Other Big Ten universities are also operating or building large telescopes, including Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin and the University of Michigan, but none of these telescopes will match the performance of SOAR. SOAR not only ensures that MSU keeps apace with this burgeoning enterprise, but its design should result in scientific discoveries which put MSU at the lead.

RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES

             With a projected useful research lifetime of more than 50 years, the SOAR telescope will be used by MSU astronomers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students, not only of today's generation, but of generations to come. The present seven member astronomy group in the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy (www.pa.msu.edu) has expertise in the areas of solar and stellar physics, the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, quasars and other energetic galaxies, and cosmology. Over the past decade, MSU astronomers have received national recognition for their discoveries and insights into the nature of the Universe. With the advent of the SOAR telescope, we only expect this pace of discovery to increase.

            As a part of MSU's commitment to the SOAR project, members of the astronomy group are designing and building cutting-edge instruments which will be used by the SOAR telescope in its exploration of the Universe. The Spartan Infrared Camera, whose design has already been approved by the SOAR consortium, will be used to obtain the highest resolution images of astronomical sources visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Because of the SOAR telescope's large 4.2 meter mirror and precise mechanical and thermal controls, the infrared images obtained with the Spartan Infrared Camera will rival the clarity of those obtainable with the Hubble Space Telescope (www.stsci.edu) and exceed the space telescope field of view by a factor of 40.

            As the SOAR project matures, other SOAR instrumentation will be developed by MSU astronomers, taking full advantage of the exciting new technologies expected to become available in the future.

EDUCATIONAL AND OUTREACH OPPORTUNITIES

            Astronomy provides a natural avenue for science education, since most people are already touched by the natural wonder of the night sky and the Universe. Members of the astronomy group at MSU will tap into this existing enthusiasm and use the SOAR telescope as a vehicle to bring astronomy to Michigan schools and to the public. MSU astronomers take the university's land grant mission seriously, counting education and outreach to the general public among their most important goals. Their plans for education and outreach are generally concentrated in three areas: K-12 education programs in the schools; planetarium, science museum, and other public outreach programs; and specific SOAR activities to be held on the MSU campus.

            In the K-12 arena, a proactive approach is planned, involving faculty visits to the schools; curriculum development using SOAR telescope data; field trip opportunities to the on-campus remote observing control center; and teacher training and education workshops, both at the schools during the year and on campus during the summer. Faculty are also working with the Abrams Planetarium (www.pa.msu.edu/abrams) on campus and the Impressions 5 Science Center in Lansing to develop SOAR exhibits and programs that fit into their overall missions. The new Biomedical and Physical Sciences Center (see p. 47, Winter 1999) will house the SOAR remote observing facility, which will allow school classes and the general public to observe astronomers 'in action' as they operate the SOAR telescope from the East Lansing campus to obtain astronomical data over high speed internet connections.

SOAR AND ITS INSTRUMENTS

            Telescopes have very long useful lifetimes because they act as 'light buckets' that collect light to feed instruments that can be built using the very latest technology. At 'first light,' as astronomers call the date when the telescope begins gathering data (in the case of SOAR, Spring of 2002), SOAR will have instruments that take advantage of its extremely sharp imaging capability and, in particular, exploit the important near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The SOAR telescope will be capable of correcting for the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere. Just as objects viewed through a patch of hot air, such as is found above a bonfire, appear to shimmer and change position, the image of a star whose light comes through the Earth's atmosphere appears to wiggle rapidly, changing position 10 to 50 times a second. The integrated image is smoothed out by this constant movement, and loses its sharpness.