We have deployed the Argus Pathfinder telescope, the Argus Array prototype, to PARI in the Appalachian mountains. Pathfinder’s hardware, software and data-analysis pipelines have already been extensively tested in Chapel Hill, and the telescope  will be commissioned at the PARI dark-sky site over the next few months.

Argus Pathfinder is a 38-telescope prototype of the Argus Array. The system observes a 92-degree stripe of declination in each 15-minute tracking time. In dark time the system tiles across the entire Northern sky each night with >30 30s exposures on each part of the sky. In bright time, Pathfinder takes >900 1s exposures on each part of the sky each night.

Check out Science Magazine’s great article on the Argus Array!.

From the article: “Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing, manyeyed giant of Greek mythology, is about to take physical form in the mountains of North Carolina. In October, an array of 38 small telescopes will begin monitoring a slice of visible sky 1700 times the size of the full Moon. Known as the Argus Array Pathfinder, it will register changes in the stars second by second, essentially making a nightlong celestial movie. Its developers hope it will pave the way for a much larger Argus Array with 900 telescopes that by 2025 could watch the entire visible night sky.”

The Argus Array and Evryscope teams are highlighting the new Argus Array design concept, the ongoing Argus prototypes, and new Evryscope results at SPIE 2022:

1. The inside-out upside-down telescope: the Argus Array’s new pseudofocal design

2. The sky at one terabit per second: Architecture and implementation of the Argus Array Hierarchical Data Processing System

3. The Argus Array Technology Demonstrator: Rapid prototyping of core technologies for an all-sky multiplexed survey telescope

4. Packing the sky: coverage optimization and evaluation for large telescope arrays

5. How to pamper your optics: climate control for the Argus Optical Array

6. The Hercules Mount: Shouldering the Weight of the Argus Array Technology Demonstrator

7. ArgusSpec: rapid, autonomous spectroscopic follow-up of bright transients

8. Argus Optical Array motion control: tracking the entire sky with a large monolithic array telescope

9. EFTE-Rocks: a framework to discriminate fast-optical-transient phenomena

We’re highlighting the ongoing Argus prototypes and Evryscope results at AAS 2022:

Hank Corbett: The sky at one terabit per second: the Argus Hierarchical Data Processing System

Amy Glazier: searching for exoplanet aurorae with Evryscope and SOAR

Alan Vasquez Soto; Argus Optical Array Motion Control: tracking the entire sky with a large single-dome array telescope

Ramses Gonzalez: The Hercules Mount Shouldering the Weight of the Argus Array

Lawrence Machia; How to pamper your optics: Climate Cintrol for the Argus Optical Array

Nathan Galliher; ArgusSpec: an Autonomous Fast-Slew Spectrograph designed for rapid flare followup

We have begun the construction of Argus Pathfinder, the 1/3-scale prototype of the Argus Array. The 38-telescope prototype is being mounted into two shipping containers, which will undergo testing at our off-campus test facility in Chapel Hill before being deployed in the Appalachian Mountains this summer.

Argus Pathfinder, following on from the Argus Technology Demonstrator test platform, will validate the Argus tracking, thermal control and enclosure concepts, as well as performing a deep every-night survey of the Northern sky.

Read our new fact sheet about the 55 Gpix Argus Array, including the new system design that eliminates the need to move the telescope dome, removes 1,000 telescope windows, and thus greatly reduces the enclosure costs.

The first Argus Array prototype, the mArgus technology testbed, is on-sky and undergoing testing. See a new photojournal of some of the development work here: A New Way to Explore the Night Sky

The Argus Array, being developed by the Law group at UNC Chapel Hill, is a large (5m-aperture-equivalent) telescope consisting of 900 moderate-aperture, off-the-shelf telescopes multiplexed into a common hemispherical dome. The prototype, the Argus Pathfinder, will demonstrate the Argus concept and observe each part of the sky for nine minutes at high cadence each night.

See our new paper about large all-sky telescope arrays and the Argus Array!

We are actively building the science team for the system; please contact us (nmlaw@physics.unc.edu) if you’re interested!

Evryscope graduate student Amy Glazier has been selected for the inaugural cohort of NASA’s Exoplanet Explorers program! One of ten early-career scientists selected nationally for the program, Amy will join the NASA ExoExplorers team, present her research to the exoplanet community, and learn from the experiences of established exoplanet researchers around the nation.

Dr. Jeff Ratzloff, recently graduated from UNC, designed and built the Evryscopes’ hardware, and discovered new types of compact objects with the systems. Read his Dean’s-Distinguished-Dissertation-Award-winning thesis here!

R. Gonzalez
Session 124. (iPoster-Plus Session) — Stellar Rotation, Variability, and Flares
124.08. Automating Superflare Spectroscopy with Evryscope and SOAR

N. Law
235.02. The Argus Array: the Deep Sky Every Minute

A. F. Vasquez Soto
Session 405 – (Oral Session) — The Sun and The Solar System
405.09. A First Look at Earth’s Orbital Space Measured with the Evryscopes
January 14, 2021, 1:20 PM – 1:30 PM

H. Corbett
Session 509 – (Oral Session) — Supernovae 3
509.08. Orbital Foregrounds for Ultra-Short Duration Transients
January 15, 2021, 1:20 PM – 1:30 PM

W. S. Howard
Session 515 – (Oral Session) — Stellar Rotation and Flares 2
515.03 D. Investigating exoplanet habitability and the stellar magnetism of cool stars across half the Southern sky via superflares, starspots, and stellar rotation.
January 15, 2021, 12:20 PM – 12:40 PM

N. Galliher
Session 515 – (Oral Session) — Stellar Rotation and Flares 2
515.04. Chasing Young Star Superflares Using the Evryscopes
January 15, 2021, 12:40 PM – 12:50 PM

A. L. Glazier
Session 515 – (Oral Session) — Stellar Rotation and Flares 2
515.05. Constraints on Post Superflare ExoAuroral Emission with SOAR and the Evryscope Fast Transient Engine
January 15, 2021,12:50 PM – 1:00 PM

We are happy to announce the NSF/MSIP development funding of the Argus Array prototype, the prototype for the next-generation Evryscope. Like the Evryscopes, Argus will cover the entire sky in each exposure, but with hundreds of quarter-meter telescopes tiled across a large dome, Argus will go far deeper.

Our NSF-funded Evryscope and exoplanets exhibit has opened at Morehead Planetarium. The exhibit includes a half-dome planetarium displaying real full-sky Evryscope images with gesture interactivity, an interactive activity where students learn to classify light curves and look for exoplanets, and interpretive material. See the WRAL (local news station) writeup here.

Reflections from objects in Earth orbit can produce subsecond, star-like optical flashes similar to astrophysical transients. Reflections have historically caused false alarms for transient surveys, but the population has not been systematically studied. In a new ApJ Letter, we report event rates for these orbital flashes using the Evryscope Fast Transient Engine, a low-latency transient detection pipeline for the Evryscopes.

Ultraviolet light from giant stellar flares can destroy a planet’s habitability. New research from the Evryscope will help astrobiologists understand how much radiation planets experience during superflares and whether life could exist on worlds beyond our solar system.

Super flares are bursts of energy that are 10 to 1,000 times larger than the biggest flares from the Earth’s sun. These flares can bathe a planet in an amount of ultraviolet light huge enough to doom the chances of life surviving there.

We  have for the first time measured the temperature of a large sample of super flares from stars, and the flares’ likely ultraviolet emissions. Our findings, published on arxiv Oct. 5 ahead of print in Astrophysical Journal, will allow researchers to put limits on the habitability of planets that are targets of upcoming planet-finding missions.

See the great popular-press writeups at Space.com and Universe Today (among others).

The Evryscope Team and collaborators have published new papers based on Evryscope data:

EVR-CB-004: An Inflated Hot Subdwarf O Star + Unseen WD Companion in a Compact Binary Discovered with the Evryscope

Evryscope and K2 Constraints on TRAPPIST-1 Superflare Occurrence and Planetary Habitability

Evryscope-South Survey of Upper- and Pre-main Sequence Solar Neighborhood Stars

Multiwavelength Photometry and Progenitor Analysis of the Nova V906 Car

EvryFlare. II. Rotation Periods of the Cool Flare Stars in TESS across Half the Southern Sky

AAS-Nova has a great article on Ward Howard’s EvryFlare survey. His survey combines long-term high-cadence Evryscope observations with short-term, high-precision TESS data to measure extreme flare rates and rotation rates for cool stars, including some of the highest-priority TESS planet-search targets.

We are excited to announce that Jeff Ratzloff, the Evryscope mechanical designer and leader of our compact-objects and fast-transiting-exoplanets programs, has been selected to receive the 2020 Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award in the area of Mathematics, Physical Sciences & Engineering. The Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizes the highest level of graduate student scholarship at UNC Chapel Hill; there is one award in physical sciences and mathematics each year.

The Evryscope team are presenting new surveys and results @ AAS 2020:

Hank Corbett talking about his fast transient survey, including EFTE, his minute-cadence all-sky transient detection and followup system	Surveys and Large Programs I, Jan 5, 2:00pm-2:10pm	Measurement of the Bright and Fast Transient Foreground with the Evryscope Fast Transient Engine H. Corbett, N. Law, R. Gonzalez, A. Vasquez Soto, J. Ratzloff, W. Howard, A. Glazier, N. Galliher
Amy Glazier, eclipse timing variations survey. Ask her too about her recent paper on superflares from TRAPPIST-1!	170.19. Evryscope Searches for Circumbinary Planets, January 5, 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm.
Alan Vasquez, searching for solar-system moving objects with Evryscope	278.02, A New Near Earth Object Survey using the Evryscopes, Jan. 6 5:30-6:30.
Nathan Galliher, young star variability with Evryscope	110.22. Evryscope-South Survey of Young Upper-main and Pre-main Sequence Solar Neighborhood Stars, January 5, 9:00 am – 10:00 am

Two new papers from the Evryscope team detail the results of the Evryscope hot subdwarf binary and planet transit surveys:

Hot Subdwarf All Southern Sky Fast Transit Survey with the Evryscope (AJ 2020, in press)
Ratzloff, Jeffrey K.; Barlow, Brad N.; Nemeth, Peter; Corbett, Henry T.; Walser, Stephen; Galliher, Nathan W.; Glazier, Amy; Howard, Ward S.; Law, Nicholas M.

EVR-CB-001: An Evolving, Progenitor, White Dwarf Compact Binary Discovered with the Evryscope (ApJ 2019, 883 51R)
Ratzloff, Jeffrey K.; Barlow, Brad N.; Kupfer, Thomas; Corcoran, Kyle A.; Geier, Stephan; Bauer, Evan; Corbett, Henry T.; Howard, Ward S.; Glazier, Amy; Law, Nicholas M.

Several more results from this survey, which has found dozens of multiple-star systems in this mysterious phase of stellar evolution, are under review.