A Wide-Field Camera and Fully Remote Operations at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory

Abstract

Upgrades at the 2.3 meter Wyoming Infrared Observatory telescope have provided the capability for fully-remote operations by a single operator from the University of Wyoming campus. A line-of-sight 300 Megabit/s 11 GHz radio link provides high-speed internet for data transfer and remote operations that include several real-time video feeds. Uninterruptable power is ensured by a 10 kVA battery supply for critical systems and a 55 kW autostart diesel generator capable of running the entire observatory for up to a week. Construction of a new four-element prime-focus corrector with fused-silica elements allows imaging over a 40' field-of-view with a new 4096x4096 UV-sensitive prime-focus camera and filter wheel. A new telescope control system facilitates the remote operations model and provides 20'' rms pointing over the usable sky. Taken together, these improvements pave the way for a new generation of sky surveys supporting space-based missions and flexible-cadence observations advancing emerging astrophysical priorities such as planet detection, quasar variability, and long-term time-domain campaigns.

arXiv comment28 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (7)

• The u'g'r'i'z' Standard Star Network
• Photometric Response Functions of the SDSS Imager
• Toward Complete Statistics of Massive Binary Stars: Penultimate Results from the Cygnus OB2 Radial Velocity Survey
• The SDSS Coadd: 275 deg^2 of Deep SDSS Imaging on Stripe 82
• The Wyoming Survey for H-alpha. III. H-alpha Luminosity Functions at z ~ 0.16, 0.24, 0.32, and 0.40
• An Autonomous Observation and Control System Based on EPICS and RTS2 for Antarctic Telescopes
• Lee Sang Gak Telescope (LSGT): A Remotely Operated Robotic Telescope for Education and Research at Seoul National University

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Exploring Reionization-Era Quasars III: Discovery of 16 Quasars at $6.4\lesssim z\lesssim 6.9$ with DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and UKIRT Hemisphere Survey and Quasar Luminosity Function at $z\sim 6.7$
• First Discoveries of z>6 Quasars with the DECam Legacy Survey and UKIRT Hemisphere Survey
• Monitoring AGNs with Hβ Asymmetry. I. First Results: Velocity-resolved Reverberation Mapping
• Broad-line region in NGC 4151 monitored by two decades of reverberation mapping campaigns. I. Evolution of structure and kinematics
• Monitoring AGNs with Hβ Asymmetry. II. Reverberation Mapping of Three Seyfert Galaxies Historically Displaying Hβ Profiles with Changing Asymmetry: Mrk 79, NGC 3227, and Mrk 841
• Radial Star Formation Histories in 32 Nearby Galaxies
• A Transmission Spectrum Of HD 189733b From Multiple Broadband Filter Observations