The Water Tank Observatory (Abstract)

Volume 39 number 1 (2011)

John Pazmino

979 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 11210; john.pazmino@ferc.gov

Abstract

(Abstract only) New York is still at times written-off as a place for a credible astronomy observatory. It is the ideal place for observing by remote methods, yes, but not for direct observation of the stars in the very sky of the City. This is false myth, and it will be more forcibly so in the next few years. You see, we’re planning and designing a new observatory on Manhattan. It will probe supernovae, active galactic nuclei, blackholes, quasars, neutron stars. It will collect data every bit as worthy as from similar observatories in the best of other locations. What’s more, to a level unheard of before, this facility taps into an urban resource never intended for astronomy. In fact, the targets mentioned above didn’t exist in our profession when this resource began construction some 130 years ago. What about luminous graffiti, or light pollution? The emissions captured by this observatory are in a region of energy that has no competition from terrestrial emissions. It’s the energy of the cosmic wind, the flux of atomic nuclei propelled at near lightspeed and crashing into air molecules. We capture the fragments of the collisions and construct the original incoming nucleus. One method of detecting the cosmic wind, or rain from the shower of debris, is by slowing the particles in water and monitoring the resulting Cerenkov emission. Several cosmic rain observatories use this technique, such as the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. We can’t in New York build such a facility from scratch—our landscape isn’t right for that, apart from the fanatical costs. In a historymaking episode in astronomy that bonds the Stars to the City, we found an alternative, one that literally sits on your roof.