Flarescope

A Space-weather Monitoring Optical Instrument

Flarescope is a fully automated observatory being installed on Palomar mountain that represents the culmination of my first three years of research at Caltech. A combination of a small aperture (0.5m), engineered diffusers, a frame-transfer EMCCD, and a high-precision tracking mount that allows it to reach sub-mmag precision on bright targets (m > 2) on the order of 5-10 minutes. Flarescope will be monitoring stellar activity from nearby, sun-like stars simultaneously with the Long Wavelength Array at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO-LWA) in order to characterize space-weather from young, solar analogs. The coordination of Flarescope and OVRO-LWA represents the beginning of a pan-chromatic study of extrasolar space weather in an attempt to constrain habitability and exo-biogenesis.

As of November 2023, Flarescope is operational! The performance review paper will be submitted and made available soon, but in the meantime, you can read the PDR here if you want to learn more! Note that the current implementation of Flarescope does not have a guide scope and uses a 0.5m rather than 0.4m aperture.