Edwin Loh

Associate Professor

Astronomy and Astrophysics [ASTRO]

loh@pa.msu.edu

(517) 355-9200 x2480

1219 BMPS Building

Department of Physics and Astronomy
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1116

 

Teaching

ISP205 S07

Visions of the Universe

Spring 2007

AST 860

Gravity

Spring 2006

AST 207

The Science of Astronomy

Fall 2005

ISP 205

Visions of the Universe

Spring 2005

 

Research

Spartan Infrared Camera

High Resolution Imaging for the SOAR Telescope

The Spartan Infrared Camera is a $2.0M instrument for the SOAR 4.1-m telescope on Cerro Pachon, Chile. Its spectral range is 1-2.5μ. It has two plate scales, 0.043 arcsec/pixel for diffraction-limited sampling in the H and K bands, and 0.073 arcsec/pixel to cover a 5.0×5.0 arcmin field. The Physics-Astronomy Department at Michigan State University is designing and building the instrument; installation is scheduled for early 2008.

Overview | Details: design reports, drawings, manuals

Important papers

Loh & Wilkinson, D. 1975, A Cooled Fairchild CCD as an Astronomical Detector, Proceedings, Imaging in Astronomy, Cambridge, MA, FB5-1.

This paper describes the first use of a charge-coupled detector for astronomy. Prior to this work, CCDs had only been used at room temperature with exposure times of fractions of a second. The primary finding was that CCDs can be cooled to reduce the dark current to levels sufficient for long, astronomical exposures.

Loh & Spillar, E. J. 1986a, Photometric Redshifts of Galaxies, ApJ 303, 154.

This paper describes the first application with a charge-coupled detector of Baum's method for measuring redshifts. The technique is 100 or more times faster than conventional spectroscopy. In 2005 in the ADS Abstract Service, 31 abstracts referred to photometric redshift.

Loh, E., Biel, J., Chen, J., Davis, M., Laporte, R., Loh, O., 2004, Spartan Infrared Camera: High Resolution Imaging for the SOAR Telescope, in Ground-based Instrumentation for Astronomy, Moorwood, A., & Iye, M., eds., Proc. SPIE 5492, 1644.

This paper describes the Spartan Camera.