Exploring the low surface brightness Universe with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array
by Jielai Zhang (University of Toronto)
Abstract.
The low surface brightness Universe is largely unexplored. The
limiting factors for low surface brightness observations are not
photon statistics or image resolution, instead they are systematic
factors such as a telescope’s internal reflections, sky subtraction,
flat fielding and the wide-angle point-spread-function. The Dragonfly
Telephoto Array addresses these factors by a combination of hardware
and software. The telescope consists of 48 commercial Canon telephoto
lenses, and is able to see low surface brightness structures about 10
times fainter than previously possible with its 2.4 x 3.2 degree wide
field of view. I will describe the technology behind Dragonfly, and
how I and my team have used it to discover enormous stellar disks,
properties of interstellar dust and ultra-diffuse-galaxies.
(Image credit: Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto)