The National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences awarded The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees a $173,438 Project Grant under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.049) to continue development of the Polyoculus Array telescope configuration. The award will support graduate student participation in deploying and commissioning the innovative instrument at the Mount Laguna Observatory in California from September 1, 2022 through August 31, 2023.
The Polyoculus Array is a scalable, lower-cost approach to obtaining large-area-equivalent telescope capabilities through linking multiple small, inexpensive commercial telescopes with fiber optic cables and a photonic combiner. This pathfinder system is intended to enable follow-up spectroscopy for time-domain astronomy discoveries made by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, with the goal of characterizing sources through measurements of physical properties like temperature, composition and radial velocity over time.
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