Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter Camera Systems.

I became involved with this program, which was developed primarily at NASA/GSFC, in 1996.

Since that time, AOTF cameras have been used by our group to study Venus, Titan, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Uranus at Mount Wilson, Starfire Optical Range, the Maui Space Surveillance System AEOS telescope, and Apache Point Observatory.  AOTF cameras utilize a tuning element composed of TeO2, a birefringent device whose index of refraction changes when driven with an RF wave.  Incident broadband light is diffracted into two orthogonally polarized beams, the wavelength of which is determined by the frequency of the input RF wave.  These devices are rugged, radiation hard, and require no moving parts, thus making them an attractive option for flight hardware and fieldwork.

The AOTF work we have done at NMSU, including building our own camera (NAIC), has been in collaboration with Dr. David Voelz in the Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  In 2005 we received a long-term loan from GSFC consisting of the entire AOTF lab, including all hardware, optics, test chambers, telescopes, etc.  We are now seeking external funding to continue the AOTF camera development work, and we continue to use them for planetary science and agricultural applications (click here to see a Quicktime image cube movie of an insect sample, or here for some photos of our experiment imaging dust devils at the Jornada Experimental Range).

Past/Present Astronomy Students Working on this Project:

Carrie Anderson (NMSU Ph.D., now NASA postdoc at GSFC)

Paul Strycker (NMSU graduate student, 4th year)

Charles Miller (NMSU graduate student, 2nd year, Cluster Fellowship Recipient)