老司机直播

With nearly $2 million in support, 老司机直播 astronomer to upgrade telescope in hunt for dark matter

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Professor Roberto Abraham, chair of the David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics, says support from CFI will be used to purchase additional lenses and specialized filters for the Dragonfly telescope (photo courtesy of Roberto Abraham)

An innovative, ground-breaking telescope named Dragonfly is about to undergo a major transformation thanks to nearly $2-million in support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

The Dragonfly Telephoto Array is a unique telescope designed to observe astronomical phenomenon such as extremely faint galaxies and the dark filaments of gas associated with many of them.

Dragonfly is the brainchild of Roberto Abraham, a professor of astronomy and chair of the David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics in the University of Toronto鈥檚 Faculty of Arts & Science, and Pieter Van Dokkum, a professor of astronomy at Yale University.

The project is one of four at 老司机直播 that are being supported by CFI, that was released March 3 and Fran莽ois-Philippe Champagne, the federal minister of innovation, science and industry. The other three 老司机直播 projects are headed by: ; Professors Jennifer Gommerman and Kullervo Hynynen in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine; and Charles Boone and his colleagues in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

鈥淚t feels amazing to receive the award,鈥 says Abraham. 鈥淭his is the culmination of years of work and, with [the support from CFI], Dragonfly can continue to expand our understanding of the universe for more years to come.

鈥淧lus, the thing I love the most is that it sets up a really tremendous future for the students and post-docs working on the project.鈥

鈥淭he Dragonfly telescope has already made ground-breaking discoveries in its short life,鈥 says Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. 鈥淚t will be an even more remarkable instrument after the transformation made possible by the award. I鈥檓 very excited and congratulate Professor Abraham and the entire team.鈥

Roberto Abraham stands with one of the Dragonfly telescope arrays

Roberto Abraham and the Dragonfly telescope (photo by Pieter van Dokkum)

Dragonfly currently comprises 48 commercially available telephoto lenses arranged in two arrays of 24 lenses 鈥 all aligned to point at the same target in the sky. The lenses feature special coatings that help make them effective for imaging at low-light levels.

The current array grew from smaller versions of three, eight and 10 lenses. With 48 lenses, Dragonfly performs like a telescope with a single lens measuring one meter in diameter, which would make it among the largest telescopes ever built.

The $1,819,000 CFI award will be used to purchase 120 additional lenses 鈥 as well as CCD cameras, filters and related hardware 鈥 for a total of 168 lenses.

Abraham, Dokkum and their collaborators have used Dragonfly to make many discoveries, including identifying an entirely new class of objects that they dubbed Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies. UDGs are comparable in size to the Milky Way Galaxy but contain a hundred to a thousand times fewer stars. They are perfect laboratories for studying dark matter, a form of matter we can鈥檛 see and that can only be studied because of its gravitational influence on ordinary matter like stars.

The upgraded Dragonfly will be able to better observe nearly invisible and incredibly diffuse hydrogen and helium gas-surrounding galaxies that are associated with dark matter.

鈥淭his is about more than just building a bigger telescope,鈥 says Abraham. 鈥淲hat the team鈥檚 really excited about is the fact that the upgraded Dragonfly will be using highly specialized filters 鈥 made in Canada 鈥 to help us detect this gas.

鈥淭his material traces dark matter, which fuels the fire of star formation, so it鈥檚 the main agent responsible for the growth of galaxies. We know almost nothing about dark matter so the lure of the unknown is totally thrilling for our team.鈥

At 老司机直播, that team includes PhD students Deborah Lokhorst and Colleen Gilhuly, and previously included 老司机直播 alumna Jielai Zhang, who is now a Schmidt Science Fellow at Oxford University.

鈥淲e feel like kids just starting out on a wonderful new adventure,鈥 says Abraham. 鈥淩unning out the back door with big dumb grins on our faces, greeting the new day with wonder as we see what the universe has in store for us. I can't wait.鈥

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