We propose a suite of telescopes be deployed as part of the Artemis III human-crewed expedition to the lunar south pole, able to collect wide-field simultaneous far-ultraviolet (UV), near-UV, and optical band images with a fast cadence (10 seconds) of a single part of the sky for several hours continuously. Wide-field, high-cadence monitoring in the optical regime has provided new scientific breakthroughs in the fields of exoplanets, stellar astrophysics, and astronomical transients. Similar observations cannot be made in the UV from within Earth's atmosphere, but are possible from the Moon's surface. The proposed observations will enable studies of atmospheric escape from close-in giant exoplanets, exoplanet magnetospheres, the physics of stellar flare formation, the impact of stellar flares on exoplanet habitability, the internal stellar structure of hot, compact stars, and the early-time evolution of supernovae and novae to better understand their progenitors and formation mechanisms.
@article{arxiv.2010.00007,
title = {A High-Cadence UV-Optical Telescope Suite On The Lunar South Pole},
author = {Scott W. Fleming and Thomas Barclay and Keaton J. Bell and Luciana Bianchi and C. E. Brasseur and JJ Hermes and R. O. Parke Loyd and Chase Million and Rachel Osten and Armin Rest and Ryan Ridden-Harper and Joshua Schlieder and Evgenya L. Shkolnik and Paula Szkody and Brad E. Tucker and Michael A. Tucker and Allison Youngblood},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.00007},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
2 pages, white paper submitted to the Artemis III Science Definition Team