As part of the NN-EXPLORE program, NASA has entered into a partnership with the MINERVA-Australis consortium. Starting in 2020B, 300 hours of shared-risk MINERVA-Australis observing time per semster are available to researchers based at U.S. institutions. MINERVA-Australis is a dedicated exoplanet observatory operated by the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) in Queensland, Australia. The MINERVA-Australis facility is suitable for observation programs requiring precision radial velocities (RVs) -- such as individual measurements to constrain orbits and masses, the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, or Doppler tomography -- precision photometric observations, and spectroscopic stellar characterization.
The facility is located at the USQ Mt. Kent Observatory, and saw first light in 2018; commissioning of the facility was completed in mid-2019. MINERVA-Australis consists of four, 0.7m PlaneWave CDK700 telescopes. These telescopes have two ports, allowing each to be used for either spectroscopic or photometric observations.
The shared-risk time can be used for spectroscopic and/or photometric observations. A summary of the facility and its capabilities can be found in the commissioning paper by Addison et al. 2019.
The MINERVA-Australis team held an information session on September 21, 2022. Slides from this session can be viewed here.
The spectroscopic observations cover 480 to 630nm at R > 80000 with no order overlap and some small wavelength gaps between the orders. Spectroscopically, the telescope array can observe targets brighter than V = 11.5mag. Very bright targets (V < 8mag) are close to the spectrograph noise floor, with RV precision better than 5 m/s (depending on the rotational velocity, V sini). Targets with V > 8mag will be photon-limited in their RV precision (again, this is reduced by higher V sini). Expected precision is demonstrated by the following examples:
All telescopes available will observe the same target individually for each observation. The individual telescope observations can be combined as independent measurements to produce a more precise result (i.e., all four telescopes combined will provide an uncertainty approximately half the size of that from one telescope). In addition, the project provides a spectroscopic diagnoistic plot for each observation, an example of which is shown here:
The photometric observations can use a specified number of telescopes (e.g., only 1onetelescope for a simple ephemeris check on an easy-to-detect transit, or four telescopes on a faint target or small transit). The photometric observations are being automated, so requests may be manually or automatically managed. Testing has shown that the best photometric precision is achieved with white light observations (i.e., no filter), but full Sloan and some Bessell filters are available. Similar to spectroscopy, the individual telescope observations can be combined as independent measurements to produce a more precise result. An example of the photometric precision is demonstrated in the following plot, which shows a comparison to LCO 1m observations of TOI824. TOI824 is a V = 11.3mag star with a transiting planet that is 2.9 Earth radii in size, and a transit depth of 1.5ppt.
Proposals should be submitted to the NN-Explore Program through NOIRLab. Information about the current NOIRLab call can be found on the NOIRLab website.
NASA has made 300 hours of MINERVA-Australis time per semester available to researchers based at U.S. institutions. The observing time is intended for exoplanet research, in particular on TESS targets, thought other exoplanet science will be considered. Awarded observing time will be allocated in hours and must include all science and calibration observations necessary to accomplish the science. More information can be requested by contacting David Ciardi at NExScI or Rob Wittenmyer at USQ.
As MINERVA-Australis is a scientific consortium, proposers must abide by the following restrictions:
Publications resulting from data collected as part of the MINERVA-Australis partnership with NASA are requested to include the following acknowledgement:
"Data presented herein were obtained with the MINERVA-Australis facility at the Mt. Kent Observatory from telescope time allocated through the NN-EXPLORE program. NN-EXPLORE is a scientific partnership of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation."(last updated February 13th, 2025 19:37:56)
The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.
