QUEST

QUEST team in Astronomy and Physics at IU:

• Dr. Stuart Musfon
• Dr. Kent Honeycutt (emeritus)
• Dr. Jim Musser
• Mark Gebhart
• Brice Adams

The QUasar Equatorial Survey Team (QUEST) is a collaboration among the Physics and Astronomy Departments at Yale University, the Physics and Astronomy Departments at Indiana University, the Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomia and the Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela. The collaboration is for the purpose of developing instruments on telescopes in Venezuela and using these instruments to study topics in observational astronomy and cosmology. The initial goal is to find and study quasars and gravitational lenses as cosmological indicators, in parallel with a galactic survey for stars of particular interest. These surveys will incorporate objective prism images, multicolor photometry, and variability studies. 

The Phase I instrument, already in service, consists of an array of 16 2048 x 2048 pixel CCDs in the focal plane of the 1-meter Schmidt telescope in Llano del Hato, Venezuela. The array is used in drift scan mode to permit coverage around the sky the sky in five degree strips.  Three colors are obtained in a single drift scan. The Phase I instrument is limited in use to within six degrees of the equator. The Phase I detector is a prototype for the Phase II array which will have smaller pixels (to allow use within twelve degees of the equator) and a larger number (96) of more sensitive thinned CCDs. 

The quasar program is intended to provide candidate gravitational lenses as well as large numbers of new faint quasars for statistical studies.  Gravitational lenses can provide information on the Hubble constant (from time delays), on the cosmological constant (from the redshift distribution), and on the large scale structure and clumped dark matter in the Universe. The stellar program is designed to find new cataclysmic variable stars and other compact binaries, new RR Lyrae stars, and new young stellar objects. These new lists will be useful not only for statistical studies but also provide a needed expanded sample of individual objects with varied properties. 


MACRO
MACRO is an underground experiment that has been designed to search for magnetic monopoles, to search for cosmic sources of neutrinos and anomalous muons, and to study the composition of high energy cosmic rays. It has been built by a U.S.-Italian collaboration. MACRO stands for Monopole, Astrophysics, and Cosmic Ray Observatory. This experiment has been built in a tunnel under the Gran Sasso Mountain in Italy, approximately 100 km east of Rome. The mountain serves as a filter to reject unwanted background cosmic rays, thus facilitating the detection of rare events such as the passage of a magnetic monopole. Additional scientific goals of MACRO are met by analyzing other penetrating particles, such as muons and neutrinos. These goals include searches for neutrino oscillations (using the earth as an oscillation medium) and searches for extraterrestrial point sources of neutrinos from collapsing stars and supernovae or from periodic X-ray binary sources such as Cygnus X-3. MACRO is also studying the composition of high energy cosmic rays near 10^15 eV for clues to the origin and acceleration of cosmic rays.  Construction of this experiment was finally completed in 1994 after 7 years of effort and uninterrupted data taking with the full detector is now the primary focus of the experiment. We expect that the experiment will continue to run until at least the year 2000. 


HEAp
HEAp is now involved in an effort to expand the experimental reach of neutrino oscillation parameter space to include the region that best accounts for the peculiar atmospheric neutrino results obtained by the Kamioka experiment in Japan. This experiment, called MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search), will study muon neutrinos that have been directed to northern Minnesota from Fermilab. The experiment will explore the neutrino mass region below 1 eV ². MINOS will turn on in 2003. 


HEAT
HEAT (High Energy Antimatter Telescope) is a balloon-borne magnetic spectrometer that will be flown twice. The first flight measured the spectra of cosmic ray positrons from 5-50 GeV; the second flight will measure cosmic ray antiprotons from 1-20 GeV. Both flights will provide important information useful in models of the production and propagation of cosmic rays. 


For more information on QUEST, MACRO, HEAp, HEAT experiments visit this website.