Panoramic optical and near-infrared SETI instrument: optical and structural design concepts

Maire, Jérôme; Wright, Shelley A.; Cosens, Maren; Antonio, Franklin; Aronson, Michael; Chaim-Weismann, Samuel A.; Drake, F. D.; Horowitz, Paul; Howard, Andrew W.; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; Raffanti, Rick; Siemion, Andrew; Stone, R. P. S.; Treffers, R. R.; Uttamchandani, Avinash; Werthimer, Dan

doi:10.1117/12.2314444

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 38 publications

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“…Transit observing strategies have been adopted to perform the first SETI all-sky surveys at visible wavelengths (Horowitz et al 2001;Howard et al 2004) with 0.32 square degrees of instantaneous field of view covering the sky in 150 clear nights. Efforts to design and develop high time resolution optical instruments capable of monitoring the entire observable sky during all observable times have been undertaken under the allsky all-time Panoramic SETI project (Cosens et al 2018;Maire et al 2018;, intended to reach an instantaneous field-of-view coverage of 8500 square degrees.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search for Nanosecond Near-infrared Transients around 1280 Celestial Objects

Maire

Wright

Barrett

et al. 2019

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The near-infrared region offers a compelling window for interstellar communications, energy transfer, and transient detection due to low extinction and low thermal emission from dust. We have conducted a search for near-infrared (950-1650 nm) light pulses having durations less than 50 nanoseconds while observing 1280 astronomical objects which include a wide range of nearby stars, clusters, and galaxies. A field of view of 2 5 × 2 5 for a duration of at least 300 s was observed for each object pointing. These observations were made using the latest Near-InfraRed Optical SETI instrumentation on the Nickel telescope (1 m) at Lick Observatory. Equipped with two detectors collecting photons coming from the same part of the sky, the instrument is aimed at detecting light pulses coincident between them within nanoseconds, as well as periodic signals. While we report on a few notifications from our system, we believe these events were consistent with the statistical noise of our data. No significant evidence for repeated near-infrared nanosecond pulsed signal was found, given the instrumental limit in sensitivity of 63 ph m −2 ns −1 .

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search for Nanosecond Near-infrared Transients around 1280 Celestial Objects

Maire

Wright

Barrett

et al. 2019

Self Cite

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Panoramic SETI: on-sky results from prototype telescopes and instrumental design

Maire

Wright

Werthimer

et al. 2020

X-Ray, Optical, and Infrared Detectors for Astronomy IX

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The Panoramic SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) experiment (PANOSETI) aims to detect and quantify optical transients from nanosecond to second precision over a large field-of-view (∼4,450 square-degrees). To meet these challenging timing and wide-field requirements, the PANOSETI experiment will use two assemblies of ∼45 telescopes to reject spurious signals by coincidence detection, each one comprising custom-made fast photon-counting hardware combined with (f /1.32) focusing optics. Preliminary on-sky results from pairs of PANOSETI prototype telescopes (100 sq.deg.) are presented in terms of instrument performance and false alarm rates. We found that a separation of >1 km between telescopes surveying the same field-of-view significantly reduces the number of false positives due to nearby sources (e.g., Cherenkov showers) in comparison to a sideby-side configuration of telescopes. Design considerations on the all-sky PANOSETI instrument and expected field-of-views are reported.

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The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations Project. I. USNO Objects Missing in Modern Sky Surveys and Follow-up Observations of a “Missing Star”

Villarroel

Soodla

Comerón

et al. 2019

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In this paper we report the current status of a new research program. The primary goal of the "Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations" (VASCO) project is to search for vanishing and appearing sources using existing survey data to find examples of exceptional astrophysical transients. The implications of finding such objects extend from traditional astrophysics fields to the more exotic searches for evidence of technologically advanced civilizations. In this first paper we present new, deeper observations of the tentative candidate discovered by Villarroel et al. (2016). We then perform the first searches for vanishing objects throughout the sky by comparing 600 million objects from the US Naval Observatory Catalogue (USNO) B1.0 down to a limiting magnitude of ∼ 20 − 21 with the recent Pan-STARRS Data Release-1 (DR1) with a limiting magnitude of ∼ 23.4. We find about 150,000 preliminary candidates that do not have any Pan-STARRS counterpart within a 30 arcsec radius. We show that these objects are redder and have larger proper motions than typical USNO objects. We visually examine the images for a subset of about 24,000 candidates, superseding the 2016 study with a sample ten times larger. We find about ∼ 100 point sources visible in only one epoch in the red band of the USNO which may be of interest in searches for strong M dwarf flares, high-redshift supernovae or other catagories of unidentified red transients.

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Panoramic optical and near-infrared SETI instrument: optical and structural design concepts

Cited by 3 publications

References 38 publications

Search for Nanosecond Near-infrared Transients around 1280 Celestial Objects

Search for Nanosecond Near-infrared Transients around 1280 Celestial Objects

Panoramic SETI: on-sky results from prototype telescopes and instrumental design

The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations Project. I. USNO Objects Missing in Modern Sky Surveys and Follow-up Observations of a “Missing Star”

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