The Night Sky Live Project PI: Robert J. Nemiroff & The Night Sky Live Collaboration

Web address: People: Faculty: Noah Bosch (Tel Aviv U.), Wellesley Pereira (Michigan Tech), J. Bruce Rafert (Clemson), John Oliver (Florida) Graduate students: Lior Shamir (MTU), Shet Tilvi (MTU) Undergraduate students (MTU): Dan Cordell, Vic Muzzin, Matt Merlo The Night Sky Live Project

CONCAM: Hardware CONCAMs are essentially fisheye lenses attached to CCDs run by a PC computer and connected to the internet. CONCAMs do not move - they are completely passive. Most simply put: light comes in the top, electricity comes in the bottom, and data flow out the bottom. In building CONCAMs, we have three montras: “ If it moves, it breaks. ” “ The lens IS the dome. ” “ Don ’ t spend 90% of your time trying to get 10% more images. ” The Night Sky Live Project

Three General Objectives Primary Science Temporal monitoring and archiving of entire visible sky down to visual magnitude 6. Search for meteors, unusual stellar variability, GRB OTs, comet variability, novae, supernovae, etc. Support Science Instantaneous cloud monitors, archival cloud monitors, generate real-time all-sky opacity maps and skyglow maps Education / Outreach Show your class last night ’ s (real) sky, archival skies, monitor meteor showers in real time, show educational sky movies, run educational modules The Night Sky Live Project

CONCAM Locations The Night Sky Live Project Ten NSL nodes are currently deployed -- more are being built

Four of the Eight CONCAM locations Kitt PeakMt. Wilson Mauna KeaWise Obs. The Night Sky Live Project

Data Policy All recent images are available through All data are free and public domain. All FITS and JPG data are archived to DVDs (previously CDs). Each CONCAM takes a new all-sky frame every 3m56s. Higher level data products (e.g. photometry) now generated in real time for most CONCAMs and displayed on the NSL web site The Night Sky Live Project

Three General Objectives Primary Science Temporal monitoring and archiving of entire visible sky down to visual magnitude 6. Search for meteors, unusual stellar variability, GRB OTs, comet variability, novae, supernovae, etc. Support Science Instantaneous cloud monitors, archival cloud monitors, generate real-time all-sky opacity maps and skyglow maps Education / Outreach Show your class last night ’ s (real) sky, archival skies, monitor meteor showers in real time, show educational sky movies, run educational modules The Night Sky Live Project

Scientific Milestones (so far) First CCD device to image the position of a gamma-ray burst during the time of the gamma-ray burst trigger (#1: GRB ) Most complete, global, and uniform coverage of a meteor storm: the 2001 Leonids Most complete light curves for hundreds of bright variable stars starting from May 2000, when the first CONCAM was deployed on Kitt Peak. First devices to give real-time optical ground truth for the whole sky in support of major astronomical telescopes, including Gemini North, Keck, Subaru, IRTF, SpaceWatch, Wise, ING 4-m, Mayall 4-M, SARA, and WIYN. Since May 2003, fisheye night sky webcams now image most of the night sky, most of the time. For example, were SN 1987A to go off tomorrow, there would be a good chance that a CONCAM saw it. The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Variable Stars How stable are stars? How stable is our Sun? CONCAM frames see all bright stars with visual magnitude > 6 New measurement every 3 minutes 56 seconds 24 hours monitoring Automatic photometry tables generated for stars with visual magnitudes > 3 Has detected binary star occultations and pulsations Can detect flares, planetary occultations, novae The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Variable Stars The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Meteors Did meteors provide Earth with its organic materials? Where do meteors come from? CONCAMs see bright meteors: fireballs with visual mag> -1. Global network gives the most complete coverage of known meteor showers. Observes sporadic meteors when no other professional instrument is looking. Obtains photometric information superior to film. Dual CONCAMs on Hawaii ’ s Mauna Kea (Big Island) and Haleakala (Maui) allow 3D determination of meteor path and origin. The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Meteors The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Meteors Altitude: start: km end: km Ground distance of end from HL: km; Ground distance of end from MK: 94.2 km Absolute distance of end from HL: km; Absolute distance of end from MK: km Ground distance of start from HL: km; Ground distance of start from MK: 96.4 km Absoulte distance of start from HL: km; Absolute distance of start from MK: km start of trial altitude: km; end of trial altitude: km Total Length of trail: 16.2 km; Ground distance from beginning to end of trail: 4.6 km angle towards earth: 73.45; zenith of the start of the trial: long= ; lat= zenith of the end of the trial: long= lat= estimated location of collision with earth (at sea level): longitude= latitude= Ground distance of meteor trail until collision with earth=24.5 km estimated source of the meteor: RA=5.467 DEC=36.54 The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Meteors The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Transients When do transients occur? What optical variability occurs in the early/bright parts of celestial explosions? Continuous sky monitoring obtains images for all optical transients with mag < 4. Confirmed no bright OT to many GRBs. Goal: find and trigger on bright new transients. Problem: hard to find in background of cosmic rays, clouds, satellite glints, variable stars, and meteors. The Night Sky Live Project

Primary Science: Transients The Night Sky Live Project

Three General Objectives Primary Science Temporal monitoring and archiving of entire visible sky down to visual magnitude 6. Search for meteors, unusual stellar variability, GRB OTs, comet variability, novae, supernovae, etc. Support Science Instantaneous cloud monitors, archival cloud monitors, generate real-time all-sky opacity maps and skyglow maps Education / Outreach Show your class last night ’ s (real) sky, archival skies, monitor meteor showers in real time, show educational sky movies, run educational modules The Night Sky Live Project

Support Science: Skyglow Real time ( “ cloudy ” ) image computationally compared with “ clear ” image taken on a previous night at the same sidereal time All PSFs removed (clear and cloudy images) leaves “ star-free ” background images gives raw skyglow for both images in mag/arcsec 2 cloudy / clear image counts divided gives relative skyglow between clear and cloudy The Night Sky Live Project

Support Science: All-Sky Opacity Maps Photometry done for hundreds of stars Both for cloudy and clear frames Given the relative skyglow map, there is a unique solution for relative sky opacity at any star location Opacity map generated by going pixel-to- pixel, weighted averaging the opacity of nearest ten stars The Night Sky Live Project

Support Science: Skyglow and Opacity Generated for only CONCAM3s at present Regenerated every 3m56s for all locations Accurate to about 0.1 magnitudes broadband Reasons for skyglow airglow, light pollution, zodiacal light, moon glow, cloud reflection. Reasons for opacity clouds, aerosols (dirty air), airplane contrails The Night Sky Live Project

Clear sky frame Cloudy frame being analyzed. The image was taken at the same sidereal time but on another night.

The Night Sky Live Project Clear sky frame Cloudy frame being analyzed. The image was taken at the same sidereal time but on another night.

The Night Sky Live Project Raw cloudy frame Opacity map superimposed in blue. Thin sub-visual clouds become apparent.

The Night Sky Live Project Raw skyglow map. Baseline skyglow is set to 21 mag/arcsec 2 Relative skyglow map between clear and cloudy frames, in mag/arcsec 2

Support Science: Usefulness Real time pointing decisions for major telescopes Real time run / don ’ t run decisions for robotic telescopes site evaluation for current major telescopes sites site evaluation for potential future telescope sites light pollution evaluation for current telescope sites increases photometric accuracy for telescopes at CONCAM locations The Night Sky Live Project

Three General Objectives Primary Science Temporal monitoring and archiving of entire visible sky down to visual magnitude 6. Search for meteors, unusual stellar variability, GRB OTs, comet variability, novae, supernovae, etc. Support Science Instantaneous cloud monitors, archival cloud monitors, generate real-time all-sky opacity maps and skyglow maps Education / Outreach Show your class last night ’ s (real) sky, archival skies, monitor meteor showers in real time, show educational sky movies, run educational modules The Night Sky Live Project

Education and Outreach 1000s of page views every night. Learning modules online variable stars diurnal motion Real time and archival viewing tonight ’ s sky meteor showers lunar eclipses The Night Sky Live Project

Support NSF CAREER ($200K) NSF CCLI ($85K) NSF ITR ($45K) Site support grants ($20K): Canary Islands South Africa Cerro Pachon (Chile) Haleakala The Night Sky Live Project

Support The Night Sky Live Project