In-Person Meeting

Cryoscope: an infrared telescope technology for wider field of view and lower thermal background.

Roger Smith & Jason Fucik

Caltech Optical Observatories

6:00 pm: In-Person Reception on the patio
6:45 pm: Dinner on the patio
7:30 pm: OSSC Business in the Auditorium 
8:00 pm: Technical Presentation in the Auditorium

Dinner Fee
Members: $40, Non-Members: $50, Student Members: $10
Late Fees of $10, after 11:59 pm March 6, 2026
(No Fee for attending without dinner)

Registration Required
Online Registration until Tuesday, March 10, 2026

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Abstract: The ideal place to build a wide field infrared telescope is in a vacuum where there is no atmosphere emitting light and the telescope can be cooled to suppress its black body emission, but the cost of a space telescope is extremely high and the current widest field of view is only 0.6 deg2 (the Euclid mission). There is great interest in finding a more affordable method for imaging over a much wider field of view, at sufficient speed to locate the transient infrared signal from cataclysmic events detected by gravitational wave observatories. By doing so, astronomers hope to explain how the heavy elements in the periodic table are created. To achieve the required sensitivity we will eliminate the thermal background emission by the sky by locating a very widefield telescope high on the Antarctic plateau where the sky is even colder than the -60C to -80C surface temperature. To eliminate thermal emission from the telescope itself, the entire optical path will be cryogenically cooled. This is made possible by a novel optical design that delivers diffraction limited imaging over 50 deg2 using an achromatic corrector employing two fused silica menisci, one of which is capable of supporting the atmospheric pressure. A technology demonstrator with 26 cm aperture will be deployed to the Concordia base at Dome C at the end of this year. If successful we hope to enable a new branch of astronomy, by building the largest infrared focal plane ever attempted, placing a 1.2 m aperture low background telescope atop a 30m tower where median seeing will be better than 0.25 arcsec, so that it will be diffraction limited over it full 50 deg2 field of view. We will describe solutions to the many challenges which include icing on the window, construction of the tower in the extreme environment, and vibration control required to deliver the exceptional image quality.   

Roger Smith is PI on the NSF grant supporting the Cryoscope technology pathfinder.   He leads the electronics team at Caltech Optical Observatories and is known in the astronomical world as an expert in infrared and optical detectors.  He was the lead engineer for the Zwicky Transient Facility, the subject of a previous OSSC talk, and has served as System Architect on several instruments for Palomar and Keck Observatories.  He developed the theory for image persistence in infrared detectors and is currently PI for an NSF program to develop large format Quantizing Charge Coupled Devices (capable of measuring the exact number of electrons in every pixel).

  Jason Fucik is the optical designer of the Cryoscope technology pathfinder. He leads the Systems and Optics team at Caltech Optical Observatories and has been involved with opto-mechanical instrumentation for 25+ years both for space and ground-based applications. Started in industry at Raytheon Santa Barbara Research Center (SBRC) on the VIIRS remote sensing satellite (part of NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership) prior to getting involved with astronomical instrumentation at Caltech.  Currently lead optical designer and engineer for several ground-based instruments for both Palomar and W.M. Keck Observatories including the three next generation spectrometers in development for Keck: HISPEC, LRIS2, and ZShooter. Also, the lead optical designer for the UVEX telescope and spectrometer, which is a wide-field ultra-violet NASA MIDEX mission to launch in 2030. 

You must be an OSSC Student Member to receive the meal discount. Student Members are Individual Members who are currently enrolled in school at least part-time and are not working full-time.  Please email Russell Rauch (Memberships@ossc.org) to update your membership type if needed.