The Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) is an astronomical
observatory in
Socorro County, New Mexico
Socorro County is a county in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 17,866. The county seat is Socorro. The county was formed in 1852 as one of the original nine counties of New Mexico Territory. Socorro wa ...
, about 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of the town of
Socorro. The observatory is located in the
Magdalena Mountains
The Magdalena Mountains are a regionally high, mountain range in Socorro County, in west-central New Mexico in the southwestern United States. The highest point in the range is South Baldy, at 10,783 ft (3,287 m), which is also the tallest ...
near the summit of
South Baldy Mountain, adjacent to the
Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research
The Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research is a scientific laboratory studying the cloud processes that produce lightning, hail, and rain, located in the Magdalena Mountains of central New Mexico. The lab is operated by the New Mexico Inst ...
. Currently operational at the site (since 2008) is a 2.4-meter fast-tracking optical
telescope
A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observ ...
,
and under construction is a ten-element optical
interferometer.
The MRO Interferometer is an international scientific collaboration between
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech and formerly New Mexico School of Mines) is a public university in Socorro, New Mexico. It offers over 30 bachelor of science degrees in technology, the sciences, engineering, man ...
(New Mexico Tech – NMT) and the
Cavendish Astrophysics Group
The Cavendish Astrophysics Group (formerly the Radio Astronomy Group) is based at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The group operates all of the telescopes at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory except for the 32m MERLI ...
of
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
. The project is principally funded by the
United States Naval Research Laboratory
The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...
(NRL), which also supports the
Navy Optical Interferometer near
Flagstaff, Arizona. NRL is part of the
Office of Naval Research.
New Mexico State University
New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public land-grant research university based primarily in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Founded in 1888, it is the oldest public institution of higher education in New Mexico and one of the state's ...
,
New Mexico Highlands University
New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) is a public university in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Founded in 1893, it has satellite campuses in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Farmington and Roswell. NMHU has an average annual enrollment of approximate ...
, the
University of Puerto Rico
The University of Puerto Rico ( es, Universidad de Puerto Rico, UPR) is the main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a government-owned corporation with 11 campuses and approximately 58,000 students and 5,3 ...
, and
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
were originally partners, but have since withdrawn.
Telescopes
2.4-meter telescope
The MRO telescope is a
Nasmyth design on an azimuth-elevation (az-el)
mount. The telescope is capable of
slew rate
In electronics, slew rate is defined as the change of voltage or current, or any other electrical quantity, per unit of time. Expressed in SI units, the unit of measurement is volts/second or amperes/second, but is usually expressed in terms of m ...
s of 10 degrees per second, enabling it to observe artificial objects in
low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...
. The telescope is also used for
asteroid studies and observations of other
Solar System
The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...
objects.
[ The MRO 2.4-meter achieved first light on October 31, 2006, and began regular operations on September 1, 2008, after a commissioning phase that included tracking near-Earth asteroid 2007 WD5 for NASA.][
The telescope's ]primary mirror
A primary mirror (or primary) is the principal light-gathering surface (the objective) of a reflecting telescope.
Description
The primary mirror of a reflecting telescope is a spherical or parabolic shaped disks of polished reflective meta ...
has a complicated history. It was built by Itek
Itek Corporation was a United States defense contractor that initially specialized in camera systems for spy satellites and various other reconnaissance systems. In the early 1960s they built a conglomerate in a fashion similar to LTV or Litto ...
as part of a competition for the contract for the Hubble mirror (although it has a different prescription than the one used to construct the Hubble). When Perkin-Elmer
PerkinElmer, Inc., previously styled Perkin-Elmer, is an American global corporation focused in the business areas of diagnostics, life science research, food, environmental and industrial testing. Its capabilities include detection, imaging, inf ...
was chosen instead as the Hubble contractor, the mirror was passed to a classified Air Force project. When this project was in turn discontinued, the mirror was transferred to the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, along with a blank for the secondary.
As of May 2008, the facility is under a multi-year contract with NASA to provide follow-up astrometry and characterization data on near-Earth asteroids and comets as part of Spaceguard
The term Spaceguard loosely refers to a number of efforts to discover, catalogue, and study near-Earth objects (NEO), especially those that may impact Earth ( potentially hazardous objects).
Asteroids are discovered by telescopes which repeate ...
, and also collaborates with the Air Force to track and characterize satellites in GEO and LEO orbits. On October 9, 2009, New Mexico Tech scientists used instruments on the MRO 2.4-meter and at the Etscorn Campus Observatory to observe controlled impacts of two NASA Centaur rockets at the southern polar region of the moon as part of the LCROSS Project.
On October 23, 2015, it was announced that the MRO telescope will receive funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...
) in early 2016 to monitor the launch and re-entry of commercial space vehicles from Spaceport America.
Magdalena Ridge Optical Interferometer
The Magdalena Ridge Optical Interferometer (MROI) is an optical
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...
and near infrared
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from arou ...
interferometer under construction at MRO. When the MROI is completed, it will have ten telescopes located on three arms. Each arm will have nine stations where the telescopes can be positioned, and one telescope can be positioned at the center. The telescopes and their enclosures will be moved with a customized crane. Light from the telescopes' primary mirrors will be directed along the arms to the Beam Combining Facility (BCF). These pipes will be evacuated of all air in order to reduce distortions. Inside the BCF, the light will first travel through extensions of the pipes in the Delay Line Area, which will bring the light beams into phase
Phase or phases may refer to:
Science
*State of matter, or phase, one of the distinct forms in which matter can exist
*Phase (matter), a region of space throughout which all physical properties are essentially uniform
* Phase space, a mathematic ...
. Then light will exit the vacuum pipes in the Beam Combining Area (BCA), where the light will be directed into one of three permanent sensors, or to a temporary instrument on a fourth table. The light will strike a total of eleven mirrors before entering a sensor.
The MROI was designed with three research areas in mind: star and planet formation
The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System (as well as other planetary systems). It suggests the Solar System is formed from gas and dust orbitin ...
, stellar accretion and mass loss, and active galactic nuclei
An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that has a much-higher-than-normal luminosity over at least some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with characteristics indicating that the luminosity is not prod ...
. An interferometer was selected because such devices can be built with higher resolving power than single-mirror telescopes, enabling them to image distant objects in greater detail. However, they do not provide more light-gathering capacity, as the total area of the mirrors is usually small.
MROI construction status
The basic design of MROI was completed in 2006. Construction of the facility began in August 2006 with the BCF building, which was completed in 2008. In July 2007, the contract for the design of the ten 1.4 m telescopes was awarded to Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems S.A. (AMOS) of Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
. In 2009 the design of the infrastructure of interferometer arms was completed, as was the design for the telescope enclosures. In 2010 construction of the arms began. Also in 2010 the first delay line was installed in the BCF.
In October 2015, New Mexico Tech signed a five-year, $25 million cooperative agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of aerospace warfighting technologies, pl ...
(AFRL) to support continued development of the interferometer at the observatory. Dr. Van Romero, Vice President of Research at Tech, said the new funding will allow the completion of three telescopes, mounts and enclosures on the mountaintop facility. The first telescope was installed in 2016, but construction was paused in 2019 when the AFRL funding was withdrawn by US Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washin ...
.
New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument
The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) is a ground-based instrument specifically designed to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. The $3.5 million instrument is the first purpose-built device for the analysis of exoplanet atmospheres, and is expected to have a powerful impact on the field of exoplanet characterization.
The Principal Investigator is Michele Creech-Eakman at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech and formerly New Mexico School of Mines) is a public university in Socorro, New Mexico. It offers over 30 bachelor of science degrees in technology, the sciences, engineering, man ...
, working with seven co-investigators. The NESSI instrument was mounted on the observatory's 2.4 meter telescope. The instrument's first exoplanet observations began in April 2014.
See also
*
* List of astronomical observatories
This is a list of astronomical observatories ordered by name, along with initial dates of operation (where an accurate date is available) and location. The list also includes a final year of operation for many observatories that are no longer in ...
* Very Large Array
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is a centimeter-wavelength radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~ west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twent ...
— nearby radio Interferometer observatory
References
External links
Department of Physics
at New Mexico Tech
from Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
website
Magdalena Ridge Observatory Clear Sky Clock
Forecasts of observing conditions.
{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System, Education, Science
Astronomical observatories in New Mexico
Cavendish Laboratory
Interferometers
Interferometric telescopes
Buildings and structures in Socorro County, New Mexico
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Buildings and structures under construction in the United States
1999 establishments in New Mexico