Dark Matter for the Common Man: The Plan

In perusing the huge volume of publication on the supposed dark matter which exists in the universe, and how it affects the motions of remote stars, galaxies, etc..., I find that many small universities, having modest telescopes, have mounted serious programs to study the subject. Having basically closed my facilities for several years now, I am laying a plan to determine that I can or cannot see the effects in the motions of the stars and such that were originally by Vera Rubin in the late 20th century.

I am tidying up the 10 foot dome with the permanently mounted 14-inch, C14 SCT with an SBIG, ST-8 camera to run for long periods, creating stackable images.

Separately I have acquired a temporary observatory in the form of a cubical, 2-room pop tent marketed by Explore Scientific in Arkansas. I plan to locate an alternate, 14-inch telescope configured as pure f:2, with a ZWO camera having a 1-inch diagonal and 30 megapixel, color image. Similarly, I plan to make detectability tests with the 18-inch dob both in the Newtonian reflector mode and as a pure, f4.5 mirror. These separate tests will help estimate the extent to which sensitivity and resolution are important in the analysis. The first test region of the sky will be the location in Lyra shown in "Deep Sky" above. The early tests will be centered on the detectability of the two geometries. If the presently uncooled, ZWO camera is competitive I would then consider acquiring a cooled version for use in the SCT.

The eventual direction of the work will be to acquire data for each region of the sky mapped at times spaced by at least a year so as to determine the relative motions of individual stars and galaxies. Along the way a secondary effort will, perhaps, show whether or not the pure, f:2 configuration is superior to the SCT configuration with refractive interface cost in overall efficiency and resolution.

Once sensitivity and resolution are established the program will move to making relatively routine imaging and analysis of spiral galaxies and open clusters.