IMAGE CREDIT: ANDREW RICHARD HARA
Keck Observers' Newsletter
Spring 2018, Issue 23
Message from the Director
Aloha, and welcome to our Spring 2018 Observers’ Newsletter. In this edition we report on updates to our current instrumentation suite along with some other changes in the works. A noteworthy addition is a new program to allow for morning twilight observing. We plan to carry this out on a trial basis for a year and will then evaluate how best to proceed with it.
I am delighted to report on the successful conclusion of two important efforts regarding our major partners, cementing the stability of our long-term operations: the signing of a new long-term partnership agreement between the University of California and the California Institute of Technology; and a new 5-year cooperative agreement with NASA. This stability allows us to continue to focus on bringing an unparalleled observing experience to our astronomical community.
We are continuing with three major instrumentation initiatives: the Keck Cosmic Reionization Mapper which adds a red channel to KCWI, is fully funded and now working toward a preliminary design review in the fall; the Keck Planet Finder which has passed its preliminary design review; and the submission of a proposal for funding to implement laser guide star tomography on Keck 1 for use with OSIRIS.
There is a lot of attention now focused on the observatories and Maunakea, and on the long-term future of astronomy in Hawaii. In response, we have stepped up our outreach and education efforts to help the public understand the science we do and the role we play in the community. Read about these efforts in back-to-back articles by our support astronomer Sherry Yeh. We are always looking for speakers for our public talks, so if you are visiting the observatory we would love to have you participate in this worthwhile endeavor.
Finally, I want to invite you to encourage your graduate students and first-time post-doctoral fellows to consider applying to the next round of the Keck Scholars Program. This program which aims to provide hands-on experience at the observatory for future astronomers has had a very successful rollout this past year. Please contact your support astronomers directly for details of the program.
Enjoy this edition of our newsletter!
A hui hou kakou,
Hilton Lewis, Director
W. M. Keck Observatory
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DEIMOS Blue Grating
Carlos Alvarez,
Support Astronomer.
A new 1200l/mm blue-sensitive grating (1200B) is availble for DEIMOS starting on Semester 18A. The grating, manufactured by Richardson Grating Lab, arrived at Keck on August 17, 2017. It was installed in DEIMOS (see Figure 1) and integrated in the DEIMOS observing support software through Fall 2017. The DEIMOS web pages contain detailed information about the grating, such as grating specifications and on-sky efficiency curves for various combinations of wavelength tilts and blocking filters (see the DEIMOS news page for additional information). |
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Figure 1: 1200B grating in the summit electronics lab during installation on its cell on August 23, 2017.
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Figure 2 shows the on-sky throughput of the 1200B in the wavelength range between 4000A and 9300A. The data were taken through slit-less spectroscopy of the standard star BD+28 4211 on October 3, 2017. The drop in efficiency at wavelengths bluer than 4500A is predominantly caused by the QE drop in the DEIMOS detector.
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Figure 2: On-sky throughput of the 1200B grating with different combinations of grating tilts and blocking filters to cover the the full DEIMOS spectral range.
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Figure 3 illustrates the on-sky throughput ratio between the 1200B and the 1200G gratings. The new 1200B grating outperforms the 1200G grating by a factor 3.3 at 4500A. The same figure shows that the 1200B grating becomes less sensitive than the 1200B grating at wavelengths redder than 5900A.
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Figure 3: On-sky throughput ratio between the 1200B and the 1200G grating in the range between 4000A and 6500A, based on observations of the standard BD+28 4211 on October 23, 2017.
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Special thanks to Evan Kirby for proposing this upgrade to DEIMOS and for his invaluable support during the commissioning of the new grating.
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KCWI Updates
Luca Rizzi,
Support Astronomer.
The Keck Cosmic Web Imager was installed on the Keck II telescope in January of 2017. After a year of commissioning, testing, and shared risk observing, the instrument is now released for regular science operations.
The feedback that we have received from our observers is overwhelmingly positive: KCWI is not only extremely sensitive, it is also remarkably versatile and easy to use. Paired with the science-quality pipeline that we run at the telescope, KCWI has already produced amazing scientific results, which will be presented at the upcoming Keck Science Meeting.
In this article, we describe the changes to our standard operational mode introduced by KCWI and try to answer some of the most common questions that we have received during the shared risk observing phase.Where is the instrument control GUI?
KCWI is not controlled by a traditional control GUI with buttons, drop-down menus, and output fields. Instead, users can prepare complete instrument configurations using a web tool ahead of time. These configurations are saved in a database, and can be retrieved and sent to the instruments. This method greatly reduces the possibility of errors in configuring the instrument at night, and provides the necessary information for the automated calibration system. An example of a few instrument configurations is shown in Figure 4.
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Figure 4: The KCWI Configuration Manager web tool is used to set and archive the instrument configurations.
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For the moment, this tool is only available within the Keck Ops network, but in the future it will be linked to the observer login page so that users can prepare the configurations ahead of time and discuss them with the SA.
Which calibrations do I need?
KCWI requires a relatively large sets of calibrations, some of which are unique to the instrument (e.g.: the 5-lines continuum bars used to trace the geometry of the IFU on the detector). In departing from the usual operational model, KCWI does not rely on observers to obtain their own calibrations. Instead, based on the instrument configurations and on the requirements of the pipeline, a newly developed calibration tool takes care of taking all the necessary calibration, both internal and dome, labels them correctly, and associates them with the corresponding science files. So far we have received very positive feedback on this tool and we have been able to smoothly run the pipeline in semi-automatic mode.
How do I center/align my targets on the IFU?
In collaboration with the KCWI team at Caltech, we have simplified the acquisition procedure to make it as user-friendly as possible. As soon as the telescope is on target, a guider image is acquired and displayed on a Ds9 display tool, with a clear overlay of the IFU field of view. With the new TCSU pointing control, the target is usually very well centered on the IFU. If a correction is necessary, a simple GUI allows to move the target in guider or E/N coordinates and a new image is acquired in real time until the target is properly aligned. Usually we can get on a new target within a few minutes even if a correction is necessary.
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Figure 5: The KCWI Offset GUI is used to center the target either in guider or absolute coordinates. It can also offset the telescope in units of “slices” as described in the article.
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How do I reduce my data? Can I look at a cube in real time?
While the observatory does not officially support the KCWI pipeline yet, we have provided both a dedicated computer with access to the data, and a full up-to-date installation of the pipeline and we can set it up to run on the data at the beginning of the night. If there are no problems, users can have access to their reduced data in real time. In case of difficulties, we are not able to provide support but we can work with the KCWI team to understand where the problems are and work together towards a solution. The pipeline can be run in quick-look mode if needed, and Ds9 is available to display the cubes and provide an initial spectrum extraction.
Do I need standard stars? How do I observe standard stars?
The need to use standard stars is exactly the same as for any other spectrograph and depends on the science requirements. We already have a list of good standard stars for KCWI, and if a star is chosen from our list, the pipeline will automatically recognize it and it will be used for flux calibration for the other cubes taken with the same configuration.
How is differential atmospheric refraction corrected for?
In two ways. The differential tracking between the guider (in R) and the science detector (blue) is corrected by our MAGIQ guiding system. The curvature of the spectrum at the blue end is corrected by the pipeline.
How do I prepare for a KCWI run?
As usual, contact your support astronomer ahead of time. To be ready for an observing run, all that is needed is a list of targets and a list of instrument configurations. Finding charts are useful, as usual. During the afternoon, we will ingest the instrument configurations in the database and run the automated calibration tool. At night the database will configure the instrument, and we will acquire the target. From then on, KCWI is like any other spectrograph: choose the exposure time and expose.
A notable exception is if an observer wants to use the Nod and Shuffle method. We have a complete set of tools both to prepare and execute N&S observations, but they are not as easy as we would like. While we work with our software team to make them more accessible, the SA is capable of running the current version and produce quality data. It is very important that observers alert their SA if the plan to obtain N&S observations.
MOSFIRE DRP Update
Leo Alcorn, Josh Walawender, Luca Rizzi,
Support Astronomers.
The MOSFIRE DRP has received another significant update. The 2018 release was facilitated by Leo Alcorn, a graduate student at Texas A&M University, who spent the last two months here at Keck HQ in Waimea as a Keck Visiting Scholar.
Users of the MOSFIRE DRP will note that the pipeline now has improved documentation which includes an improved installation method, a link to a test data set, and a walkthrough reduction of that data set. The pipeline is also now Python 3 compatible (Python 3 will now be the default environment for running the DRP) and this results in a noticeable improvement in reduction speed. Lastly the new release includes numerous smaller bugfixes and improvements.
We encourage users to follow the instructions on the installation page to create our tested environment and install the new pipeline, as well as to try the walkthrough reductions with the new test dataset. Any users experiencing errors should submit a New Issue to the GitHub repository for the DRP, where these issues or questions can be discussed by the support community and other users. Feedback on the pipeline is wanted and appreciated.
This update was performed in collaboration with a visiting scholar (Leo Alcorn) and highlights the importance of user participation in the creation, maintenance, and improvement of observing software and data reduction pipelines. Individuals interested in participating in Keck Data Reduction efforts or who have ideas for the pipeline should contact the support team. This project was hosted on GitHub, which provides many tools for the development of software, including project management, issue tracking, teams, permissions management, and integrations with other software, which makes it ideal for distributed collaboration.
Keck I Deployable Tertiary
Josh Walawender,
Support Astronomer.
The Keck 1 Deployable Tertiary (K1DM3) module is a new tertiary mirror system for the Keck I telescope. It is funded through an NSF-MRI grant to UCSC with a sub-award to WMKO. Its primary scientific advance is to enhance time domain astronomy at WMKO by enabling the observatory (and observers) to rapidly swap instruments.
The project passed its pre-ship review on Dec 19 and the hardware has arrived at Keck. The mirror was coated at the Keck coating facility and the main module was craned up from the dome floor to the Naysmith deck on Feb 12. K1DM3 will be commissioned in the 18A semester and we expect it to be in regular use in 18B.
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Figure 6: The K1DM3 build team posing in front of the module before shipment to Keck.
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Figure 7: K1DM3 being lowered in to position on the K1 deck after being craned up from the dome floor
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NIRSPEC Update
Greg Doppmann,
Support Astronomer.
Besides having had another productive semester on sky, NIRSPEC been gearing up for some exciting new capabilities. Last September, a team from CalTech and JPL returned to WMKO with a Microresonator Astrocomb system designed to provide radial velocity calibration sensitive enough to detect Earth-analog exoplanets. Employing NIRSPEC’s high resolution infrared capability, this was the first demonstration of a microcomb on an astronomical spectrograph, carrying out observations to search for the known exoplanet HD 187123b using the Keck II Telescope. More details are available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.05174
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Figure 8: Team from Caltech and JPL on Maunakea.
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This past semester, significant progress has been made in the project to upgrade NIRSPEC. The new H2RG Teledyne detectors for the spectrograph (SPEC) and the slit viewing camera (SCAM) purchased in early 2017 have been delivered to UCLA where testing has begun at the IR Lab. Last October, NIRSPEC successfully passed its design review giving a green light for the observatory to plan the installation of the upgrade components into the existing dewar, which is scheduled to occur in semester 2018B.
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Figure 9: Testing of the new H2RG Teledyne detectors
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Mainland Observing Update
Josh Walawender,
Support Astronomer.
As always, mainland observing remains a popular observing mode for Keck. The mainland observing system has been in place (in one form or another) for more than 15 years now and we are in the midst of re-evaluating some of the technologies which are used to make mainland observing happen.
Our current system relies on ISDN technology to serve as a backup connectivity pathway for "mainland only" qualified sites in case of a network failure. As some of you may know, this is an aging technology which is becoming more difficult and expensive to maintain. We are currently studying alternative technologies to provide backup connectivity in the event of a network failure. We have a working group which includes SAs, observers, and IT experts who are looking at options. It is becoming clear, however, that there are no clear drop in replacements which would provide the same level of path independence as ISDN. As a result, we will be looking at both alternative technologies and at possible policy changes. The internet is very different now than when Keck's Mainland Observing system was first conceived, so this re-examination is probably overdue. This process will take some time as the cost-benefit tradeoffs of possible technologies and policies needs to be considered, so we ask for your patience as we move forward.
In addition to considering alternatives to ISDN backup lines, which most observers won't interact with in practice, we are also examining teleconferencing alternatives to our current polycom system. The interaction between observers and Keck staff (i.e. the OAs and SAs) is critical to maintaining a high quality and efficient observing experience, so this is also a change which we are looking at carefully before implementing. Our current plan is to set up Zoom meeting hosts for both Keck telescopes with backup systems in each of the remote operations rooms in Waimea. We have arranged for polycom connection licenses for these hosts, so that remote sites can connect to Keck using their existing polycom hardware. This allows us to roll out the new system gradually and test it out while maintaining our existing polycom capabilities. Once the new system in in place and tested, we will describe a set of requirements for mainland observing sites to follow if they would like to replace existing polycom hardware with newer hardware.
Finally, we are also updating the instrument VNC sessions. The primary change which will be visible to users is that some instruments will use fewer, larger resolution screens. This will be rolled out on an instrument by instrument basis slowly over time. As a result, observers may notice a change in the layout of the control software that they are used to. In addition, we are changing the VNC host machines from Sun OS to linux which will change some of the network addresses used when connecting to VNCs -- this should be transparent to users, but will allow us to modernize some of our infrastructure.
If you have any questions about these changes or about mainland observing in general, please contact us at: Mainland_Observing@keck.hawaii.edu.
Twilight Observing
Randy Campbell, Carlos Alvarez,
Support Astronomers.
Keck is in the process of implementing a new program for morning twilight. The idea is to squeeze in a few extra infrared observations during normally scheduled visible observations, when those observations end early and surrender the last portions of the night.
A target and observation manager was developed for a trial program in semester 2018A with NIRC2-NGS. This system is fully developed and includes planning tools, scripts, instructions and documentation. The trial program for Solar System observations has been successful in monitoring volcanism and atmospheres of a sample of moons and planets in the Solar System. This set of tools was developed by visiting scholar, Ned Molter (UCB) in cooperation with Support Astronomer Carlos Alvarez and Keck Software Engineer Shui Kwok. The tools have been tested and used by the OA’s as they participate in the program within their normal work shift that ends at sunrise.
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Figure 1. A view of webpage: The Twilight Zone
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For more on the existing tool set please see: https://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/inst/tda/TwilightZone.html
The trial period was completed on 31 Jan 2018. During the February SSC meeting, the SSC and WMKO Director decided to extend the program into future semesters and to include the possibility of other observing programs. Each institution will be limited to one (1) program per institution. The programs designed for longer term (> 1-2 years) will be given priority. A couple of guiding principles of the program include:
- Voluntary participation by classically-scheduled PI and OA,
- Execution completely at the discretion of the classically-scheduled PI and the OA
Furthermore, each morning twilight PI will be required to:
- Use only NIRC2-NGS on Keck II
- Develop target and observation managers,
- Develop, test, and debug instrument scripts
- Employ only simple instrument configurations
- Dissect the observations into short integrations (<5min)
Each institution will determine an approval process and will select a single program to be submitted to the observatory for implementation. Interested PI’s should propose using the “cadence” option on the cover sheet. Once a program is approved, the observing team will need to develop a set of instructions, planning tools, instrument scripts, and everything needed for OA’s to conduct the observations autonomously. Please, note that these are voluntary observations by the OA, when the classically-scheduled PI volunteers the morning twilight, hence, there is no guarantee on the number of observations that will be conducted. Nevertheless, this program has proven to be advantageous for a certain types of quick snapshot observations.
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Team Keck Symposium
Sherry Yeh,
Support Astronomer.
The Team Keck Symposium was held on December 8, 2017. Sponsored by Prof. Shri Kulkarni, this was an event to highlight and celebrate Keck support astronomers' personal research projects. "Team Keck" is a nickname for the group of Keck science staffers, who are afforded up to 20% of their annual work time to conduct research. We invited Keck council and board members, Maunakea observatory directors, Maunakea observatory astronomers, and a number of special guests. Keck support astronomers work on a wide range of research projects, from low-mass star formation to galaxy clusters, using facilities around the world. The symposium began with Hilton's warm welcome, followed by Team Keck presentations, and concluded by Shri's closing remarks.
Randy Campbell works on gas dynamics near the galactic center using near-IR emission lines, to monitor and study the origin and fate of gas clumps in such an extreme environment. By using the 3-D Volume Rendering tool, OsrsVol, which is developed by Randy and provides capability of isolating features in the spatial-velocity morphology of the Brackett-Gamma (BrG) emission near the galactic center. Two features are shown in Figure 1.
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Figure 1: Extended molecular gas clumps near the Galactic Center, analysed using OsrsVol.
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Luca Rizzi and collaborators use HST optical and infrared data to build the largest catalog of distances to galaxies in the nearby Universe, with the purpose of mapping the three-dimensional structure of clusters, voids, filaments and large super-structure. The main method they use is the Tip of the Red Giant Branch -- using state of the art techniques such maximum likelihood fit to the red giant branch luminosity function to reach the photometric limit and correctly estimate the uncertainties.
Figure 2 is a sparsely populated color magnitude diagram and the result of a maximum-likelihood estimation of the position of the tip of the red giant branch. This is an example of a galaxy studied in the context of a multi-year large project based on HST data, to produce distances to as many galaxies as possible to map the structure of the local universe.
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Figure 2: Left: A color magnitude diagram; Right: A maximum-likelihood estimation of the position of the tip of the red giant branch.
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Josh Walawender summarized his recent paper (Walawender, et al. 2016) in which he and his collaborators examined the population of shocks from protostellar outflows revealed by molecular hydrogen emission (H2) in the L1340 star forming region, based on the H2 images taken with
WIRCam on CFHT.
Figure 3 shows an overview of the L1340A portion of the cloud with shocks marked by circles and outflow axis marked with dashed lines. They found that the L1340 cloud contained significant outflow activity including parsec scale flows, one of which can be seen in Figure 3.
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Figure 3: An overview of L1340A H2 emission. Shocks are marked by circles and outflow axis are marked with dashed lines.
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Carlos Alvarez is a member of a Team Keck project which studies embedded star clusters (ECs) in our Milky Way. The team members include Marc Kassis, Scott Dahm, Randy Campbell and Jim Lyke. The project samples are selected from Solin et al (2012), who located 137 previously unknown ECs based on data from the UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey. Carlos uses NIRC2 and MOSFIRE data to determine the clusters' properties, to constrain cluster size, distance, age, stellar content, and binary fraction. The ultimate goal of the project is to characterize the clusters' initial mass function.
Figure 4 is a color composite of the EC3 cluster obtained with NIRC2 using the Keck II LGS-AO system. The red and blue channels correspond to the Kp and H filters, respectively. The green channel was created as the average of the Kp and H filters. The image covers a FOV of 2'x2' and it was built as a mosaic of 25x10s individual frames in each band, taken with the NIRC2 wide camera (FoV 40"x40"). This is arguably the largest diffraction-limited image ever produced by Keck.
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Figure 4: A three-color composite NIRC2 image of an embedded cluster. Red: Kp-band image; Blue: H-band image; Green: The average of the Kp- and H-band images.
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Jim Lyke studies classical novae and the expansion of their shells using AO on both Keck telescopes. Together with Marc Kassis and Randy Campbell, Jim used AO to resolve expanding gas and dust shells from recent classical novae shells. Because the novae are still bright, they collect more information then studies at later times. This work makes use of both NIRC2 for thermal imaging and OSIRIS for integral field spectroscopy.
Figure 5 is an example of classical nova shell Ca VIII spectra. The spatially resolved spectra provide information of the dynamics of the expanding nova shell.
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Figure 5: OSIRIS Ca VIII spectra of a classical nova shell.
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Sherry Yeh works on massive star feedback mechanisms in galaxies. She uses molecular and ionized hydrogen emission line morphologies and line ratios to diagnose the excitation mechanisms of H2 emission, thus the source of massive star energy input. Sherry took H2 and BrG images of 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud, using NEWFIRM on the CTIO 4-meter telescope.
Figure 6 shows the first fully calibrated H2 emission image of 30 Doradus: H2 is in red, BrG is in blue, and K-band image is in green; the star cluster R136 is marked by a black circle. By analyzing the emission line morphologies, the H2-to-BrG ratio, the ancillary radio and infrared data, with Cloudy models, Sherry and collaborators suggest that the H2 emission is originated from the photo-dissociation regions in 30 Doradus, and there is
no sign of shock excitation (Yeh et al. 2015).
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Figure 6: A three-color composite image of 30 Doradus. H2 is in red, BrG is in blue, and K-band image is in green; the star cluster R136 is marked by a black circle.
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Grant Hill studies colliding WR star winds by observing and modeling the wind shock physics. High signal-to-noise ratio spectra were taken with LIRIS and UTSO in Chile, and the modeling provides measurements of crucial parameters such as the orbital inclination and thus, together with the RV orbits, the stellar masses. Grant and collaborators find good agreement with expectations based on theoretical studies and hydrodynamical modeling of colliding wind systems. It also raises the exciting prospect of providing a reliable method to learn more about WR stellar masses and winds, and for studying the physics of colliding winds in massive stars.
Figure 7 shows a fit of synthetic profiles (dashed lines) to the WR 113 C III 5696 emission lines. The bar in the top corner of the plot indicates the vertical scale in continuum units. Spectra are labelled in phase (0.0 corresponds to the WR star in front). A Journal paper is to appear in MNRAS, 474, 2987.
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Figure 7: A fit of synthetic profiles (dashed lines) to the WR 113 C III 5696 emission lines.
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Greg Doppmann uses NIRSPEC observations to search for weak continuum excess and residual gas in planet forming disks around young stars. With high resolution spectroscopy at 4.7 microns, Greg and collaborators carefully modeled the stellar component to measure the M-band veiling. Then by removing the stellar component in their data, they are sensitive to weak fundamental CO emission that traces non-accreting gas in our sample of classical T Tauri stars, weak T Tauri stars, and transition objects. By probing the amount of dust (from the veiling) and the kinematics of the residual gas (from resolved CO emission), they characterize how the gas and the dust evolve within inner disks at early ages to further our understanding of the roles these components play in the formation of terrestrial planets. (Doppmann, Najita, & Carr, 2017)
Figure 8 is NIRSPEC observations showing measured M-band veiling vs. CO line flux relative to the stellar continuum for classical T Tauri stars (CTTS, filled circles), transition objects (TOs, open circles), and weak T Tauri stars (WTTS, inverted black triangles). CO line strengths are measured from combined R-branch (red) or P-branch (blue) points, respectively. Objects with more than one observational epoch are connected by a dashed line. WTTS, which had no CO emission and little or no veiling, are placed at their 1-sigma emission detection upper limit for CO equivalent width (lower left corner of plot). These results underscore the utility of NIRSPEC for characterizing the terrestrial planet-forming region in disks around young stars.
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Figure 8: M-band veiling vs. CO line flux relative to the stellar continuum for classical T Tauri stars (CTTS, filled circles), transition objects (TOs, open circles), and weak T Tauri stars (WTTS, inverted black triangles).
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Percy Gomez studies bright cluster galaxies (BCGs), particularly focusing on identifying the effects of galaxy cluster mergers on the properties of BCGs.
Figure 9 shows the region within the core of Abell 85 that was mapped with KCWI. In 30 minutes, Percy and collaborators detected filamentary structures in [OII] (shown), [OIII], and H-beta emission.
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Figure 9: KCWI [OII] map of Abell 85.
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Outreach
Sherry Yeh,
Support Astronomer.
Every year Keck actively hosts and participates in public outreach activities on the Big Island. The outreach group is volunteer-based, with Keck staff from all departments. Keck takes part in about a dozen annual outreach events, and each event on average serves few hundred people of all ages. In this article we highlight few activities.
We held a much anticipated Keck open house on Nov 11, 2017. We opened our doors at the headquarter to the general public, and the open house attracted over a thousand people from in- and out of-state. Keck staff and community volunteers filled the day with enthusiasm and many activities to showcase what we do at Keck to explore the Universe. Because pictures speak louder than words, let the pictures speak for the excitement on the open house day. A big shout-out to the open house organizers Leslie Kissner, Shelly Pelfrey, Gloria Martin, and Mari-Ela Chock, for their dedicated hard work to organize the open house, and to everyone who has volunteered to helping out at the open house. (Photo credit Kyle Lanclos)
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Figure 1: Remote Operations exhibition, learn what it is like to be an astronomer at Keck!
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Figure 2: Telescope rotator demonstration, showing how the control systems work for the telescopes and instruments.
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Figure 3: Keck Theater talk by Brialyn Onodera, a former Keck Akamai intern. Brialyn is an engineer at the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope and a former Keck Akamai intern. She is born and raised on the Big Island, and she shared her career path story in an engaging talk.
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Figure 4: Infrared camera selfies was one of the most popular activities at the open house!
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Figure 5: Telescope tracking and guiding demonstration.
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Figure 6: Hydrostatic bearings demonstration, showing how the Keck telescopes, which weigh 300-ton each, are well balanced and easy to move.
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Figure 7: Liquid nitrogen ice cream was one of the favorites!
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Figure 8: Spectroscopy demonstration, learn what spectroscopy is and how rainbows are made.
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Figure 9: Use a hydraulic press to make Keck keychains, another very popular activity.
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Figure 10: The open house organizers, thank you for your excellent work!
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Triple/Quad Whammy is an annual activity which we host local school field trips at the Keck headquarter. It is held three to four times a year, and on average about 600 grade school students are served through this program. We offer hands-on activities at the headquarter, including:
Infrared light: We demonstrate infrared astronomy using a commercial infrared camera and materials which are opaque in the optical but transparent in the infrared, to showcase how astronomers can "see through" clouds and dust in the Universe.
Spectroscopy demonstration: We demonstrate emission spectroscopy to explain how astronomers identify "fingerprints" of elements in the Universe, and how we use them to study the composition of celestial objects. We also use a tower of LEDs which consists of continuum light of different colors, thus showing the continuum lights at different temperatures, and how this applies to studying temperatures of celestial objects.
Telescope tracking and guiding: We explain how modern ground-based telescopes, such as Keck, use open-loop tracking and guiding techniques to correct for telescope imperfection, temperature changes, wind shake, etc., in order to stay on a target for a long period of time. A webcam camera is used to demonstrate and simulate the guiding camera, and the capability to track objects on screen, no matter how we move and rotate the objects in all directions.
Segment building: In this hands-on, team-work activity, we focus on how the mirror segments work together to form a large telescope mirror. The participants learn about the construction and maintenance of the primary mirror, by placing all 36 segments in place in the right orders. This activity also requires excellent communication among the team members.
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Figure 11: Infrared astronomy demonstration.
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Figure 12: Segment building.
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Every year we also offer free public astronomy talks, which generally attract several hundred people. The talk topics cover a wide range of cutting-edge astronomy research, including first stars, gravitational waves, astrobiology, etc. on January 5, 2018 Dr. Kip Thorne shared his knowledge on black hole astrophysics, and the talk attracted 755 people, our largest turnout for the public talks to date. (Photo credit: Andrew Cooper)
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Figure 13: A long line-up prior to the talk.
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Figure 14: Dr. Thorne at the talk.
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New Keck Employees in Observing Support
Randy Campbell,
Observing Support Manager.
You may notice some new faces at the observatory during your next run as we’ve been busy filling open positions in the observing support department. We’ve hired two Observing Assistants, OA, and one Support Astronomer, SA in past few months. Please welcome Alessandro Returra (SA), Tony Ridnour (OA), and Alan Hatakeyama (OA) to Keck.
 Tony Ridenour comes to us from our radio astronomy neighbors over at SMA, where he has been an operator for the past four years. He is a UH Hilo Astronomy graduate, and before his time at SMA, worked on Mauna Loa on the Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy.
 Alessandro Rettura, Keck's new Support Astronomer, moved here from southern California where Alessandro was working at IPAC, NASA's Science and Data Center.
Alessandro has extensive observing and mission planning experience on telescopes around the globe and in space, including Keck with DEIMOS and MOSFIRE and HST.
He has research experience at various institutions including Johns Hopkins, UC Riverside, Caltech, JPL, and IPAC. Alessandro will be initially learning to support Keck's multi-object spectrometers, LRIS, DEIMOS, and MOSFIRE and then expanding his involvement out to other interments and projects. We're very glad to have him joining the observing support team.
Alan Hatakeyama (not pictured), is Keck’s newest Observing Assistant, OA, and brings with him many years of observing experience on Mauna Kea telescopes and beyond. Alan has gained a wide variety of knowledge working on the mountain as an operator at JCMT, Gemini Observatory, and Subaru Observatory. Alan’s most recent role was as a Mission Operations Specialist for SOFIA, where he supported in-flight observations, as well as handled observation and flight planning. He is excited to be back in Hawaii, and we are happy to have him as part of our team.
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