Observing the Dynamic Infrared Sky

Abstract

The entirety of the dynamic infrared sky has only just begun to be explored. The field of multi-messenger time-domain astronomy has grown significantly over the past years with astronomical transient and variable events including, but not limited to, supernovae, gravitational waves, and neutrino events. Whilst there are a significant number of all-sky optical surveys that are observing these events, there are a substantially less number in the near-infrared even though it is known that extinction due to dust means that a proportion of these events cannot be seen in the optical regime.

One of the main reason for the lack of infrared survey telescopes is that astronomy has, for many years, traditionally relied on Mercury Cadium Telluride detectors which are orders of magnitude more expensive than equivalent optical detectors. However, a recent change has been the development of large format Indium Gallium Arsenide detectors which may allow astronomers to bridge this gap between optical and infrared surveys.

In this thesis, two wide-field fully robotic near-infrared surveys are discussed, Palomar Gattini-IR and the Dynamic REd All-sky Monitoring Survey. Palomar Gattini-IR is a 0.3m telescope located at Palomar Observatory in California, United States of America operated by the California Institute of Technology. The Dynamic REd Allsky Monitoring Survey is a survey that will be located at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia utilising a 0.5m telescope and will be operated by the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Australian National University. The Dynamic REd All-sky Monitoring Survey will take advantage of the development of Indium Gallium Arsenide technologies to achieve its goals.

This thesis describes the initial commissioning and subsequent operations of Palomar Gattini-IR and the path from a conceptual design through to the development for the Dynamic REd All-sky Monitoring Survey. This thesis also describes the feedback loop that is required for the design of an instrument from observations to follow-up to identification to statistics to survey requirements and back to the initial design.

This thesis also describes the development of supporting tools and infrastructure for multi-wavelength, multi-colour, and multi-messenger time-domain astronomy. The observations from Palomar Gattini-IR and the design for the Dynamic REd All-sky Monitoring Survey have shown that there is a substantial amount of interest in the near-infrared astronomical sky and bodes well for the future with the on-going automation of the Australian National University 2.3m telescope and synergies with the Vera Rubin Observatory.