Collaborative Research: The Condor Array Telescope Survey of the Northern Sky

The Condor Array Telescope has been operating in southwest New Mexico since 2021. This observatory combines six off-the-shelf refracting telescopes with six off-the-shelf CMOS cameras and is optimized for very high sensitivity, very rapid time resolution, and a very wide field of view. Continued operations of this telescope in a collaboration between the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the American Museum of Natural History will focus on three specific science topics: imaging the “cosmic web” of intergalactic gas, searching for shells from ancient stellar novae, and making deep images of our nearest galactic neighbors. Under this award, the collaboration will replace the current cameras, which will increase the field of view of the array by 70%. A portion of the observing time on Condor will be allocated to provide astronomical telescope access to under-represented students at Stony Brook University, and the telescope will provide faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students at the respective institutions with access to a world-class astronomical observing facility with unique observational capabilities. The research team will use Condor to obtain, analyze, and interpret a variety of observations of the Northern Hemisphere sky, focusing on several important science topics: (1) Condor will image huge portions of the extremely faint and distant filaments of the “cosmic web” of intergalactic gas that stretches between the galaxies, seeking to determine its structure on very large spatial scales. (2) The team will explore extended regions surrounding 25 cataclysmic variable stars of a variety of different types, searching for ancient nova shells that may provide clues as to how the types are related to one another. (3) Condor will monitor wide regions of the sky toward two nearby groups of galaxies minute by minute and night by night, gradually building up deep images of our nearest galaxy neighbors while searching for flaring novae and other evidence of stars that have been expelled from the galaxies and are now floating freely in intergalactic space. These same observations are also likely to find Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zones of white dwarf stars and tenuous dusty clouds of interstellar gas that obscure our view of the distant Universe. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.