WideField Imaging Surveys from the Ground地面宽视场成像调查.pptVIP

Wide-Field Imaging Surveys from the Ground S. M. Kahn Stanford U./SLAC and J.A. Tyson University of California, Davis Wide-Field Imaging from Space The purpose of this workshop is to explore the scientific opportunities of wide-field optical/IR imaging from space, and the advantages of going to space are obvious: Absence of atmospheric seeing distortions. Broad-band spectral coverage with no gaps. Very faint intrinsic sky background. Absence of weather-related photometric errors. Continuous viewing availability of most of the sky at all times. Availability of a stable environment, both mechnanically and thermally. Lack of degradation of optical surfaces. + many more issues too numerous to list! But Ground-Based Astronomy Still has a role to play! A foremost consideration is cost, of course. Very powerful facilities on the ground still cost less than “small explorers” in the NASA program. There are some other obvious advantages as well: Significantly reduced reliability requirements. Some instruments (not all) can indeed be built fast and cheap. Refurbishability and technology evolution are easily accommodated. Fewer “envelope constraints” - large monolithic apertures and structures are possible. Widely separated telescope designs (e.g. interferometers) do not require station keeping. Fewer limitations on data rates. Potential for multiple funding models - private/public; NSF/DOE versus NASA. Of course, this field has a long history… For upcoming surveys, the key consideration is the étendue! The solid angle surveyed per unit time, to some limiting flux, F, at a signal-to-noise ratio, SNR, in exposures of time, t, is given by: Here AW is the étendue of the telescope, e is the efficiency of the system, Fsky is the sky intensity, dW is the size of the seeing-limited PSF, and adet is proportional to detector noise and trap depth. Large surveys require high étendue. But with conventional optical designs - high étendue requires large detector area. We are seei