Condor Array Telescope: Deep Imaging Observation Tool Provides New View of Very-Low-Brightness Universe

Over the past few years, the idea of low-surface-brightness imaging of the cosmos has sparked new interest. This is driven by novel tools that record low-surface brightness over wide fields of view. A new observation tool called the "Condor Array Telescope" recently opened up a new opportunity for very low-brightness imaging for astronomers.

What is a Condor Array Telescope?

Condor refers to an array of six refracting telescopes that measure 180 millimeters in diameter. Each component has a motorized filter wheel, a large-format CMOS camera, and a focal-reducing field corrector. This array telescope is optimized for detecting both point sources and extended low-surface-brightness features. It is also capable of imaging regions of the sky at a very rapid cadence of 60 seconds or less.

The astronomical tool is at the Dark Sky New Mexico observatory in iCondor, New Mexico's southwest Corner. A project team of faculty and students from Stony Brook University and the American Museum of Natural History designed, built, and operated it.

In the late summer of 2019, Condor was awarded funding by the Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation program of the National Science Foundation. Its construction was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the telescope was deployed to the Dark Sky New Mexico observatory in 2020 and 2021. The Condor array telescope is currently in full operation, where it autonomously collects astronomical observations every clear night.

The project's project's main goal is to study the low surface brightness of the large and small Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way galaxy, and other nearby and distant galaxies. It also aims to investigate gravitational microlensing events, transiting planets, and stars at a very rapid cadence. Finally, the telescope is built to explore the faint and extended ejects of explosive and massive stars.

Deep Imaging Observations

A team of researchers presents the first scientific findings based on observations obtained by Condor. The new imaging tool uses computers to combine light from different smaller telescopes into the equivalent of one larger telescope. The result of their study is described in the paper "Introducing the Condor array telescope II - deep imaging observations of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5907 and the NGC 5866 Group: yet another view of the iconic stellar stream."

Led by Kenneth M. Lanzetta from Stony Brook and Micheal M. Shara from the American Museum of Natural History, the research team used Condoto to study an extremely faint stellar stream surrounding the nearby galaxy NGC 5907. This well-known spiral galaxy is located around 50 million light-years from EarthStellarar streams are produced when the primary galaxy's tidal gravitational force disrupts dwarf companion galaxies. In 2010, an earlier image captured by a different telescope revealed a remarkable stellar stream that forms two complete loops of a helix around the galaxy. However, another image obtained by the Dragonfly Telephoto Array in 2019 did not show any trace of this helix.

The research team decided to test the Condor telescope and to weigh in on the discrepancy. The astronomers obtained a deep image of NGC 5907 in 2022. Just like in the Dragonfly image, the Condor image did not show any trace of the helix, leading the researchers to conclude that the helix from the 2010 image was probably an artifact related to image processing. The image Condor also revealed faint features that were not picked up by the previous images.