Center Spread

The universe is so large and his department is so small.

"Our biggest challenge now is that we almost have too many opportunities," said Rene Walterbos, academic head of NMSU's Department of Astronomy.

It's an enviable problem for the department's faculty and students, and two huge new projects - the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Magdalena Ridge Observatory - account for many of the wondrous choices suddenly open to them.

Rene Walterbos, shown here with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope behind him, says NMSU's involvement in the SDSS project opens "an enormous array of possibilities" for faculty and staff research.

SDSS, the most ambitious astronomical survey project ever undertaken, is mapping the skies in such detail that astronomers will be "mining" the data for years to come. Even before it was dedicated, last October, the unique cube-shaped telescope at Apache Point Observatory was making headlines worldwide by discovering galaxies, quasars and other objects more distant than any ever before observed.

As a new affiliate member of the SDSS project, NMSU is in prestigious company. The other participants are the University of Chicago, the Institute for Advanced Study, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, the University of Washington, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Japan Participation Group, Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the U.S. Naval Observatory. Funding agencies include the Sloan Foundation, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Participation in the five-year SDSS project "opens up an enormous array of possibilities for our faculty and students because the survey touches on almost all aspects of astronomy," Walterbos noted - from faculty member Mark Marley's study of brown dwarfs to Anatoly Klypin and Jon Holtzman's research on the formation of galaxies.

SDSS is analogous to the Human Genome Project in the amount and significance of the scientific data it will make available, said Kurt S.J. Anderson, NMSU astronomy professor and site director of Apache Point Observatory. "Astronomers will be able to use the data in the study of the large-scale structure of the universe, extrasolar planets, stellar objects, brown dwarfs, cool white dwarfs - for almost any object you can name, this project will gather more information than has ever been available before."

Efforts are under way to raise the funds needed to increase NMSU's participant level from "affiliate" to "full" membership status, which would give all interested faculty and students access to SDSS data. With affiliate status, this access is limited to six individuals in the astronomy department, Walterbos said.

Besides the 2.5-meter SDSS telescope, Apache Point is home to a 1-meter telescope owned by NMSU and a 3.5-meter telescope owned by the Astrophysical Research Consortium, a group of research institutions that includes most of the SDSS participants. NMSU is a member of the ARC and runs the observatory, located high on a ridge in the Sacramento Mountains near Cloudcroft, N.M.

The Magdalena Ridge Observatory, to be located on an even higher peak west of Socorro, N.M., will lead two lives. By day it will track test missiles for the U.S. Department of Defense; by night it will give astronomers a powerful new tool for their research - three telescopes linked to act as one big instrument in a technology known as optical interferometry.

NMSU's research partners in the MRO project are New Mexico Tech, New Mexico Highlands, the University of Puerto Rico and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Officials came from as far away as Japan for the dedication of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey last October.

Kurt Anderson, NMSU astronomy professor and site director for Apache Point Observatory, at the rear of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope. The large tank contains liquid nitrogen, used to cool the telescope's sensors to -80 degrees Celsius to enhance their sensitivity.

"MRO will be unique in that it is designed to do these two very different things," said astronomer Tom Harrison, NMSU's point man for the collaboration. "This next year is a big year for putting together a design that meets both the military's needs and the astronomers' needs."

The location, on South Baldy Peak in the Magdalena Mountains, is ideal for both purposes. It gives the military a good vantage point for observing tests over the northern part of White Sands Missile Range. And at better than 10,700 feet in altitude, it is one of the highest and darkest astronomy observing sites available.

"The higher you go, the drier the air and the less atmosphere you have in front of you to distort images," Harrison noted.

Beyond that advantage, MRO's telescopes will use a technology known as adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric distortion. The telescopes' computerized, deformable mirrors will be able to continuously change their surfaces to compensate for distortion and create sharper images. With the combined boosts of adaptive optics and interferometry, MRO's abilities are expected to rival those of a space-based observatory.

But one of the biggest advantages to NMSU's astronomy program is simply the amount of observing time that will be available at MRO, Harrison said. "The national observatories are so over-subscribed," he said, and even at Apache Point, NMSU shares the 3.5-meter telescope with six other institutions.

"Another important thing for us is that NMSU has been given the responsibility for designing several instruments, such as cameras and spectrographs, for the observatory," Harrison said. "MRO could be the seed for us to develop the capabilities of designing instruments in-house."

Karl Hill

An Array of Projects

Besides the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Magdalena Ridge Observatory projects, NMSU's astronomy department is active on many fronts. Just a few examples:

Beebe

Planetary astronomer Reta Beebe, though retired from the faculty, remains active as a researcher and manages the Planetary Atmospheres Node of NASA's Planetary Data System. This data center, used by researchers the world over, is located at NMSU.

Faculty member Bernie McNamara has completed a book on the history of space exploration. Into the Final Frontier: The Human Exploration of Space, published by Harcourt College Publishers, examines the human advance into space from the early 1900s - when science fiction writers like H.G. Wells inspired the first generation of rocket scientists - into the 21st century and the possibilities opening up with the International Space Station.

McNamara

Nancy Chanover, '97, who received her Ph.D. in astronomy at NMSU and did postdoctoral research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland before returning to NMSU as a faculty member, recently was selected as the department's third Tombaugh Scholar. This endowment - named for and made possible by the late Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto and father of NMSU's astronomy research program - supports promising astronomers who are beginning their research careers. Chanover's current research, on the atmosphere of Saturn and its large moon Titan, will be important to the success of NASA's Cassini mission, a four-year, close-up study of the Saturnian system that will begin in earnest in 2004, when a spacecraft that was launched in 1997 approaches the ringed planet.

Chanover

In a workshop next to the SDSS telescope, astronomers drill holes in aluminum plates that are used in spectrographic observations. Each hole corresponds to the position of a selected galaxy, quasar or star in the sky.

Apache Point Observatory, high on a ridge in the Sacramento Mountains near Cloudcroft, N.M., looks over the Tularosa Basin and White Sands National Monument.

Red fiber-optic cables plugged into holes in aluminum "plug plates" capture light from objects selected for observation. Each plug plate has 640 holes for this purpose, and on a good night observers use six to nine plates.