Marian Doru Suran Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy E-mail: suran@aira.astro.ro

1. Dezvoltarea la standarde mondiale a astronomiei romanesti prin instalarea unui telescop cu oglinda lichida de 12-15m Marian Doru Suran Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy E-mail: suran@aira.astro.ro

2. Telescopes

3. STANDARDE DE TELESCOAPE • Standard national; • Standard regional (ex. Balcanic); • Standard international: • European (ESO); • American (US+Canada). Standard Liquid Mirror Telescope.

4. New Projects for large telescopes (>5m aperture) and the possible position of our telescope

5. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m

6. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m Overall Objective: • The Romanian DOLIT telescope will constitute a high entry, low cost, high-range class (12m-14m) telescope, planned to be fully automated (robotic and remote control), based on a liquid 12-14m primary mirror (LMT), working in both photometric (from optical to near IR) and spectroscopic modes. • This telescope will sustain operations related to the Compleimentarity/Synergy with JWST space telescope and ESA ‘Cosmic Vision’ program (2015-2025). • Until the next generation of telescopes (~2020; 26mGMT/US, 30mTMT/US/Canada and 42m E-ELT/ESO) this telescope will be the most powerful ground-based single optical instrument in the world (<2020). Even then, telescope will remain in top the five (up to 2030-2040). • For a 12 telescope with 0.8 deg. FOV, the effective etendue is ~ 57 m2 deg2. For comparison, the SDSS telescope (the large telescope in the class of 2.5m aperture) has an etendue of ~ 5.9 m2 deg2. In a second phase, with FOV~3deg the etendue will be ~800 m2 deg2, the largest etandue in the world, even in the future era of next generation telescopes (TMT, E-ELT). • A liquid-mirror telescope can observe only at or near the zenith. But in the same time, this limitation provides advantages of simplicity and economy of design, and of operational simplicity. The telescope will be of transit type, observing large samples of objects with a short cadence per night (typically 32-64 sec for a 0.8 deg FOV and 64-192 sec for a 3 deg FOV). The data flow of the telescope will be typically of order 20 GB per hour for the 0.8 deg FOV and 200 GB per hour for a 3 deg FOV, assuring huge databases of observations provided by this telescope. • At the same time, the high optical quality of the liquid primary mirror (Strehl index >0.98) combined with an excellent seeing at a high-quality site (typical seeing ~0.7 arcsec) will assure the excellent performance of this 12-14m telescope.

7. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m Why this telescope: • The 12m LMT telescope will have the largest single aperture and etendue until ~2020 and remains in Top5 until 2030-2040.The price of the telescope/maintenance will be comparable to that of a classical 2.5-3m telescope. The design and optimization of the system leverages its unique capability to scan a large sky area to a faint flux limit in a short amount of time. The main product of the 12m LMT telescope system will be a multi-color ubgrizy image of about half the sky to unprecedented depth (r ~ 28), with superior image quality (0.7 arsec median delivered seeing in the r band), and exquisite photometric (1% or better) and astrometric (10 mas per epoch) accuracy. The catalogs based on these imaging data will include about 1 billion galaxies and a similar number of stars. For a comparison, the best analogous contemporary dataset is that of 2.5m SDSS, which provides ubgriz image up to r~22.5, with 1.5 arcsec seeing, about a factor of two larger photometric errors and three times larger astrometric errors, and about two orders of magnitude fewer detected sources. • Another major advantage is the fact that the deep sky map is produced by taking hundreds of shorter exposures. Each sky position within the survey area will be observed over 800 times over time scales spanning seven orders of magnitude (r~28-29.5 from 30 sec to 10 years). Hence, the 12m telescope will open the time domain for massive and accurate studies of photometric and astrometric varying sources with unprecedented coverage in flux, wavelength, and timescale. • Large enough to complement future space telescopes. The 12m LMT will be complementary to space telescopes Kepler (2009), GAIA (2011), JWST (2013), and future ESA ‘Cosmic vision Programs, 2015-2025’ .

8. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m Advantages: The 12-15m LMT telescope constitutes: • High entry (Very high-aperture class telescope). First aperture class until 2020. • Low cost (~5% of a classical telescope of the same aperture). • A nearly-perfect primary mirror (gravitational liquid shape form). Strehl ration 0.98. • Planned to be fully automated (remote control, robotic/transit type). • Simplicity and economy of the design. • Simplicity in operation. The first mirror pointed to azimuth direction. Only one planar rotational axis, to assure the liquid form of the first mirror). • Very good observational conditions (pointing only to zenith); • Simple, transit type for short cadence acquisition rate (fixed axis). • Very precise photometry and astrometry from repeated observations (fixed axis). Disadvantages: • Fixed in azimuth direction. Only 400sq.deg. from 20.000sq.deg. 2D sky access.

9. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m What is new: The large aperture and etendue of the telescope will assure new observational tasks related to: • Observations related to reionization epoch and first light for galaxies and stars (z>5); • Observations related to DM clustering and evolution (z>7); • Observations of baryonic luminous matter clustering and evolution (z>3); • LSS structure, Pancake and filamentary Web structure evolution (z>2); • DM nonlinear clustering superstructures (z>0.5); • Observational test related to DE eos and the evolutionary study of the reacceleration epoch (z~0.8) • The complementarity with other space missions related to studies of CMB (Plank, ALMA) or baryonic luminous matter (JWST). • The synergy with the future TMT and E-ELT telescopes (also complementary to JWST).

10. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m Scientific case: • The limitation of a liquid-mirror telescope is related to the fixed zenith-pointing position. The telescope will be of transit type for large samples of objects with short cadence rate per night (typically 32-64 sec for a 0.8 deg FOV and 64-192 sec for a 3 deg FOV). Long time exposures will be realized by repeated summation over many nights/years. The working scientific programs for our LMT transit telescope is related to very deep, large/wide field, multi-band observations for short/long term monitoring with summation over 1-10 yrs. Figure 1. Science requirement box for a 12m telescope compared with a 6.5m and 3.5m telescope

11. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m Using all these facilities, the DOLIT telescope will be capable to observe up to: • ~108 galaxies to b~r~29.5m; • ~5x104 clusters; • ~102 superclusters ; • ~102 novae in Scluptor Supercluster at z=0.11; • 3D map of Large Scale Structure over ~0.4 Gpc3 (comoving) to redshift z=1 and ~1 Gpc3 (comoving) to redshift z=1.5; • ~105 AGN (z<7); • ~10 QSO strong lenses; • ~109 stars; • ~200 halo dwarf novae per year; • ~106 supernovae, • ~103 yr-1 microlensing events for planets searching; • several Kuiper Belt objects per night; • NEO + NEA + NEC+ PHO objects as small as 50m diameter at 1 AU and 1 km diameter asteroids as far away as Jupiter orbit. In this mode, the DOLIT telescope is planned to works as generally as possible. The telescope will be used to carry out a wide variety of scientific investigations: • Probing Dark Energy and Dark Matter (fundamental physics, cosmology and relicts of the early Universe); • Mapping the LSS (galaxies and ISM evolution on dark era, DM+DE, BAO, weak lensing); • Mapping Stars (star formation and evolution, from reionization epoch up to now); • Taking an Inventory of the Solar System (Solar System near and far); • Exploring the Transient Optical Sky (alert NEO + NEA + NEC+ PHO objects).

12. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m

13. DOLIT/ LMT telescope 12-15m

14. Conclusions

15. Intrarea Romaniei in ESO+ENO (2009/UAI) (?) • Taxa de intrare: 15.0M Euros • Taxa anuala: 1.5M Euros