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Roboscope: The Robotic Astronomy Project.

In Collaboration with Bosma Machine and Tool Corp. and Hexel
Corp. the Physics Department offers the following research
project this spring to a group of three undergraduate students.

Hexapod telescope mounting structures are mechanically superior to
conventional telescope mounts and have been proposed for use on large
telescopes such as ALMA and AMiBA. ( see:
www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/abstracts/abs263.html,
www.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/amiba/). This robotic telescope technology
will allow for a wide variety of new kinds of astronomical observations.

For example, when a heavy star explodes in a distant galaxies a burst of
gamma rays lasting just a few seconds is detected by satellites orbiting
Earth. Is there a flash on the sky at optical wavelengths at the same
time?  To find out, a robotic telescope is required that can respond to
information sent down from a these satellites, dash to the correct
coordinates and snap an image. This rapid motion is best accomplished
using light and stiff controllable structures such as the hexapod mount.

However, there is very little experience with hexapod telescope mounting
structures in actual astronomical observation. The students involved in
this project will produce one of the first tests of this technology.  They
will have the exclusive use a of hexabot robot (www.hexel.com) along with
an optical telescope and ccd camera for the semester.  They will mount the
telescope on the hexabot and use it to observe stars in an automated
sequence, recording and analysing the images from the sky. They will
develop software to analyze those images creating star charts which are
then used to calibrate the pointing of the mount. They will then publish a
measurment of the pointing precision of their hexapod robotic telescope.

In late April, the team will demonstrate Roboscope to a group
of visiting astronomers and representatives from Bosma and Hexel.

The students will work as a team, meeting weekly with advisor Professor
Jeff Peterson (jbp@cmu.edu, 268-2785). However, the team itself, not the
advisor, will decide how to acccomplish the goals of the project.  Each
student will receive 9 hours credit under the Physics Department
undergraduate research (33-350) course or in the Robotics Department
(16-597). Recognizing that spring skys are often cloudy the team must be
prepared to spend clear nights observing.

If time allows and the Roboscope performs well enough, the team will
attempt to respond to actual alerts from gamma-ray telescopes in space.
However, the main goal of this project is to demonstrate that hexapods
can find and track simpler targets such as stars.

This project is open to students from any department.  The team will
be selected by Professor Peterson on Thursday November 16.
Interested students should contact him immediately by email to arrange a
meeting before Wednesday at 9 pm.