Panoramic optical and near-infrared SETI instrument: overall specifications and science program
Abstract
We present overall specifications and science goals for a new optical and near-infrared (350 - 1650 nm) instru- ment designed to greatly enlarge the current Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) phase space. The Pulsed All-sky Near-infrared Optical SETI (PANOSETI) observatory will be a dedicated SETI facility that aims to increase sky area searched, wavelengths covered, number of stellar systems observed, and duration of time monitored. This observatory will offer an "all-observable-sky" optical and wide-field near-infrared pulsed tech- nosignature and astrophysical transient search that is capable of surveying the entire northern hemisphere. The final implemented experiment will search for transient pulsed signals occurring between nanosecond to second time scales. The optical component will cover a solid angle 2.5 million times larger than current SETI targeted searches, while also increasing dwell time per source by a factor of 10,000. The PANOSETI instrument will be the first near-infrared wide-field SETI program ever conducted. The rapid technological advance of fast-response optical and near-infrared detector arrays (i.e., Multi-Pixel Photon Counting; MPPC) make this program now feasible. The PANOSETI instrument design uses innovative domes that house 100 Fresnel lenses, which will search concurrently over 8,000 square degrees for transient signals (see Maire et al. and Cosens et al., this conference). In this paper, we describe the overall instrumental specifications and science objectives for PANOSETI.
Additional Information
© 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). The PANOSETI research and instrumentation program is made possible by the enthusiastic support and interest of Franklin Antonio. We thank the Bloomfield Family Foundation for supporting SETI research at UC San Diego in the CASS Optical and Infrared Laboratory. Harvard SETI is supported by The Planetary Society. UC Berkeley's SETI efforts involved with PANOSETI are supported by NSF grant 1407804, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, and the Marilyn and Watson Alberts SETI Chair fund. We would like to thank the staff at Mt. Laguna and Lick Observatory for their help with equipment testing. The following vendors have been incredibly gracious with their answers to our frequent technical questions: Hamamatsu, Weeroc, Caen Technologies, and Amplification Technologies.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 92003
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190102-155138119
- Bloomfield Family Foundation
- The Planetary Society (TPS)
- AST-1407804
- NSF
- Breakthrough Prize Foundation
- Marilyn and Watson Alberts SETI Chair
- Created
-
2019-01-03Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 10702