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D. S. Theil, M. E. Edwards, C. A. Jurgenson, D. I. Klebe, R. E. Stencel (University of Denver, Department of Physics and Astronomy), J. L. Cash, R. T. Martin, P. E. Johnson, J. S. Weger (University of Wyoming,)
We present new science results from TNTCAM2 obtained at the WIRO 2.3 meter telescope. These include: (1) polarization maps of the BN object and a section of M42 around the Trapezium that shows bow shocks; (2) imaging and polarimetry of selected circumstellar shells of evolved stars and planetary nebulae; (3) new mid-IR photometry of ISO selected Vega-type stars showing a mid-infrared spectral energy excess, and (4) attempts to detect proplyds in Orion.
The photometry and polarimetry of bright sources allows us to characterize the system performance in terms of throughput of the optics and net system sensitivity, which we compare to the sensitivity of TNTCAM1 at WIRO (S/N = 5 on an 8.0 magnitude 11.5\mum source (20 mJy) over a 30 minutes of coadded .03s integrations). We also present the efficiency of the polarization analyzer and a comparison of our polarization measurments of selected bright objects with previous measurements in the mid-IR.
We discuss and demonstrate the remote use of TNTCAM2 on the Wyoming Infra-Red Observatory (WIRO) telescope. The remote observer can connect to the observatory computers from a variety of operating systems using AT&T's Virtual Network Computing software. Remote real-time control of the telescope and TNTCAM2 have already been achieved from the University of Denver over a standard ethernet connection through WIRO's 10.5 Mbps microwave link.
We thank Craig Smith for invaluable suggestions and guidance in collecting and reducing polarimetry data in the mid-IR. We acknowledge support under NSF grant AST-9724506 to the University of Denver and NASA EPSCoR grant #NCC5-414 to the University of Wyoming.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://casa.colorado.edu/~theil/TNTCAM. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: orieri@yahoo.com