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First Light Instrument for the Discovery Channel Telescope to Accelerate Outer Solar System Research

December 17, 2009

NIHTS - Lowell ObservatoryWhen Lowell Observatory’s 4.2-meter Discovery Channel Telescope delivers its first science results in a few years, some of those results are expected to help astronomers understand much more about the composition and character of the outer solar system, especially a sparse population of small icy bodies called the Kuiper Belt. This is fitting. Lowell Observatory astronomers have been leading in this area since Pluto was discovered in 1930. This work has continued through a program known as the Deep Ecliptic Survey, ongoing research on the Kuiper Belt, and direct involvement in New Horizons, NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission.

The newest and most advanced tool for this work is called NIHTS (pronounced “nights”), the Near-Infrared High-Throughput Spectrograph. NIHTS will be used to carry out a new research program, the Kuiper Spectral Survey (KSS).

“NIHTS is designed to be a highly efficient instrument to allow us to take spectra of very faint objects,” said Henry Roe, Lowell Observatory astronomer. “NIHTS should be a fabulous tool, not only for exploring the Kuiper Belt, but also for many other projects, including identifying the coolest brown dwarfs, studying clouds on young stars, and understanding the composition of near-Earth asteroids.”

Roe plans to use NIHTS to make spectroscopic observations of hundreds of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). While well over a thousand KBOs are now known, only a few dozen of the brightest ones have been studied in any significant detail. The goal with NIHTS is to observe several hundred fainter KBOs that are more representative of this icy region in the outer solar system.

Such precise study of such faint objects is possible because NIHTS collects light at near-infrared wavelengths.

When light from the sun lands on Kuiper Belt objects, much of it is reflected back. Some, however, is absorbed by molecules on the surface, leaving a distinctive pattern in the color of the reflected light – a kind of shadowy fingerprint. Each type of material that might be on the surface of a KBO leaves a distinctly different spectral pattern in the reflected light. The most interesting parts of these patterns lie in the infrared, which is why NIHTS is designed to observe at those wavelengths. However, room temperature objects emit light in the infrared. Therefore the NIHTS detector and insides of the instrument have to be kept extremely cold.

NIHTS will be one of five instruments mounted on what is called the “instrument cube” at the base of the Discovery Channel Telescope. The arrangement has been designed so that it is possible to switch from one instrument to the next in less than a minute. In other words, astronomers will not only have some of the finest instruments in the world to use in their work, but they will be able to switch between them in not much more time than it takes a carpenter to put down a hammer and pick up a screwdriver.

NIHTS was recently funded for development under a grant from NASA’s Planetary Astronomy and Planetary Major Equipment Programs to Lowell Observatory astronomer Henry Roe.

Visit DCT Science for more information.

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Source: Written and provided by Lowell Observatory Staff.
Photo: An illustration depicting the Near-Infrared High-Throughput Spectrograph (NIHTS) that will be used to carry out the Kuiper Spectral Survey (KSS).

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