Archives 2021

Hello again, friends and supporters.  It’s been far too long since I’ve sent an update. It’s been a challenging journey from the point we shipped off the instruments and, if I told you every twist and turn since then, this update would be so long that no one would read it! The short explanation is that I kept hoping there would be a good moment to tell the story without leaving things in the air, but things were just too crazy and busy. Please accept my apologies and promise to do to better.

What I do have for you is an update in multiple parts. The first two parts were written 7 weeks ago, and the last part will catch you up from there.  Thanks for bearing with me and I hope you enjoy hearing all about it!

October 28, 2021

I’m writing this on the plane back from Hawaii, after a 48-hour trip where I spent the majority of my waking hours on the summit of Haleakala. 

It gives me great pleasure to say that both instruments were installed “successfully” in August, and (I believe) are now working fully.  The summit is a stunningly beautiful place, both objectively as well as for astronomy.  So, in addition to searching for Near Earth Objects (NEOs) with PAN-STARRS and studying the solar dynamics as never before with DKIST, the Haleakala Observatory will also be searching for technosignatures with LaserSETI!

[Above: IFA2, the southeast-facing instrument, Below: IFA1, the north-facing instrument along with the Air Force’s satellite-tracking telescope is barely visible in the upper left corner]

For reference, the instruments at Haleakala look at the same set of stars as the insturments at Ferguson (RFO) in Sonoma, CA.

Knowing how scenic the summit is, we setup a camera to take a time lapse, and the battery almost lasted the whole time.

I’d especially like to thank the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) staff, who’ve been very helpful to the project during these difficult pandemic times.  Also, as you can see from the time lapse, the setup work was a team effort with the critical help of the SETI Institute’s own Assistant Director Steven Bourdow, as well as my son Jason.  It really takes a village to make LaserSETI work, and that couldn’t have been more obvious in the past couple months.

The second half of this update, which details the challenges of the installation, starts with the shipping company puncturing one of the two cases with a forklift, and unfortunately in a way that’s clearly unrelated to intentionally manipulating the case. I found out just before boarding the plane, and when I arrived, I was relieved that they didn’t damage the instruments. But they did skewer the 12V DC transformer that powers everything.  “No problem,” I thought, we’ll just order a new one, and I’d purposely planned extra days into the trip precisely in case something went wrong beyond the array of spare parts I’d shipped with the instruments.

The day before I planned to leave Hawaii, after chasing all over East Maui Post Offices, the replacement arrived, and I pulled it out of the box to make sure it wasn’t damaged.  I drove it up to the summit, installed it, and powered on our gear. But none of the six exhaust fans worked.  “That’s weird, I thought, I tested those a dozen times. And all of them??” As I tried to repair them, fuses kept blowing but I could find nothing wrong with the wiring.  A little voice told me to check the input voltage… and it was 24V, double what it should be!  Suddenly, in my head, Han was yelling at Chewie “Turn it off! Turn it off!” and I ran to kill the power.  The two transformers were identical except for a 12 vs a 24 in the model number.  I didn’t notice and apparently neither did Amazon.

It was the end of our last full day, and there was nothing to do but go home.  The state of every component in both instruments was in question, and nothing was on the network for me to connect remotely. As I mentioned before, the IfA team is great, so I shipped in a _new_ new transformer and, after carefully checking the model number, they swapped it in.  We then did some networking magic to connect into the gear and make it remotely accessible.  Finally, I could assess the state of the equipment.

Fortunately, the heart of the instrument, the science cameras passed a whole battery of tests, and the networking and Intel science computers checked out too.  The raspberry pi is the central nervous system, with sensors and the motor to open and close the sunshade, which protects the camera shutters from the Sun during the day.  One pi was wiggling the motor but not able to open the sunshade, the other pi was offline completely.  If we had to be unlucky with this double disaster, at least they were inexpensive components, and also not the router which would’ve made the whole system inaccessible.

Meanwhile, we’re going through the claims process with the shipper who punctured the box to begin with (resolved painfully but satisfactorily) and Amazon (like the Energizer Bunny, it’s still going).  We also built new raspberry pi’s, to prepare for complete replacement of the existing ones in both systems. This was more challenging since all our tools and spare parts were in crates still stuck on Maui due to the claims process then a scheduling incompatibility between the shipper and IfA.

And so, in the past 2 days, I swapped out the motor controller boards in both pi’s, focused all four science cameras, and dealt with a couple of other minor issues that cropped up.  In addition, our shipping cases should be on their way back to CA, and a new one is being manufactured to replace the punctured one—since we don’t want contaminants or pests taking up residence in the new instruments during the case’s next voyage.

December 17, 2021

More good news and less-good news.

First, the less-good news. When I arrived home in October, the two IfA instruments were performing well. Then, occasionally two of the cameras would exhibit a strange, transient issue that was easy to clear. Then, it started happening more often and not clearing as easily. So I engaged the camera manufacturer to get their advice. Just after I did that, however, the two cameras—one in each of the two instruments, unfortunately—went completely offline, and no amount of Fonzie’s Magic Touch™ could coax them back online for further diagnosis, repair, or workarounds. Adding insult to injury, that’s when severe weather hit the Hawaiian Islands, causing blizzards and more at high altitude. The summit lost power for about 4 days and networking connectivity for 9.  Apparently, they had to splice in 200 feet of new fiber a couple miles from the summit, in a spot that was a 3 hour hike to get to, and the first time they tried the equipment didn’t work due to the altitude!

The instruments dutifully came back online earlier this week, with frost covering their windows but that cleared after another day or so. Yet still both troublesome cameras remain offline. At this point, I’m fairly certain we’ll have to use the two spare cameras we’d ordered for the next batch of 10 instruments to swap into the IfA instruments, then hope the camera company can repair the damaged two to replenish our supply of spares.

At the same time, RFO2 (the second instrument at Robert Ferguson Observatory) experienced a similar increasing failure pattern with the hard drive that the instrument writes the camera data to.  For a long time, once every couple of months, the hard drive would go offline and require a little software Fonz’ing to get it back. Not ideal, but no big deal. Then, within the span of a couple weeks, it happened more often, then every time we started trying to take data, then anytime we accessed the drive at all. Figuring the most likely cause was the drive itself or the USB enclosure, I ordered replacements and made the 3-hour round trip to swap it in. It looked good at first, but then went straight back into its previous pattern. So I made the trip again, this time with a new USB cable and PC. I swapped in the cable, ran some tests, and everything looked good. Relieved that I didn’t have to perform the hardware and software surgery to swap in a new computer, I went home.  That worked great for a couple days, but then it went back to stuck offline. To allow some data-gathering until we can head up there again, I’ve jury-rigged it to write its data to RFO1’s hard drive. The process is intensive enough that single hard drive can’t keep up if both instruments are capturing data, but something is better than nothing, even if just for a short while.

Besides the fact that RFO1 continues to chug along as the Opportunity Mars Rover to RFO2’s Spirit, there’s other good news. After months of claims, almost 100 emails back and work, issues and workarounds, ordering and coordinating, and over 5 weeks in transit (when the outbound journey took barely more than 1 week), on Friday we picked up the cases with our tools and spare parts, along with the replacement case for the punctured one. In addition to closing a long saga, it will be a lot easier to build new instruments and work on the ones at RFO with those!  Here’s LaserSETI team member Dan, with our crates loaded up and the punctured one left with the shipper (which they required to settle the claim).

In closing, I just want to thank you all for your support and bearing with us through this difficult year. If we had a dollar for every time things were harder than they needed to be, we could fund the global observatory, but every time I also knew I was blessed to be pursuing this effort on behalf of all of you and that many others had difficulties far worse than anything we experienced.

We will have more news to share soon, but for now let’s just say: Happy holidays to you and yours, and best wishes from all of us at LaserSETI and the SETI Institute!

July 29, 2021

It’s been longer than I wanted since the last update, but I promised myself the next update would have real news to share, instead of trials, tribulations, and delays—and that day has finally come!

The LaserSETI instruments bound for the summit of Haleakala are on a boat and have land in sight! We have plane tickets, a rental car (!!!), and a date to begin installation.  Our second observatory is coming together, and we’ll be able to start co-observing our two fields-of-view.

I was a little excited that the instruments were finally shipping out.  I do own other shirts, for the record.

And here’s what’s inside each case: one instrument, half of the riser for the instrument that needs sit above ground level, non-instrument components like conduit, cable, and the DC transformer, as well as spare parts just in case. The little blue box is a “transport data logger” which records the forces experienced during shipment, for learning and insurance.  

The cases were just a few inches too big for the truck bed so we built a platform on top.  I can confidently say it was the most comfortable and secure ride of the instruments’ lives.

I don’t want to dwell on the negative but, since the instruments have been built and waiting for 10 months now, I think it’s important to account for the time.  Unsurprisingly, the majority was due to COVID-related travel restrictions, both in Hawaii and then California.  The remaining third, however, was difficulty in obtaining shipping cases.  One surprise was that reusable cases were less than 50% more than one-time use crates which, since we have many more instruments to ship out around the world, will save thousands of dollars.  It also means that, in the future, there’s one less external dependency to keep the project on track.  The major cause here, however, was a vendor that was bad at communicating and worse at delivering.  It’s no astronomy joke to say it was “night and day” once we were finally able to identify an alternative vendor and case product that suited our needs on a reasonable timeline.  The value of people and companies who keep their word and deliver on-time just cannot be overstated!

The next update will certainly be soon, to share pictures and stories on the installation, and I’m confident we’ll get some stunning pictures from on top of that mountain!  And stay tuned in case we have any surprises to announce!

Feb 24, 2021

Hello everyone, and welcome to another LaserSETI update!  I hope 2021 is treating you all better than 2020 and, to help with that, I have good news and great news.  I apologize for the dearth of pictures; I hope you’ll find it exciting, nonetheless.

First, the good news:  The less-than-great news is that travel restrictions had prevented us from installing the other two LaserSETI instruments on Haleakala. Still, the good news is there are no remaining roadblocks, and we’re starting the process of crating them and final preparation for Installation Day: Haleakala Edition.  We don’t have a date on the calendar pinned yet, but—knock on wood—it’s going to be soon.  My hope is April, if not March.  We can’t wait to get these two beautiful boxes of science on the sky.

Second, the great news:  LaserSETI is growing!  My original, personal bar for success was to build the instruments so we could see if they delivered the kind of science I’d expected, and it was with your help that we’ve achieved that.  But the project’s goal has always been a global network monitoring all the time, all the time.  We’re officially starting the next phase of the project to build and deploy TEN more instruments. 

This phase isn’t just an on-paper exercise, however:

• Twenty-two cameras are being manufactured as we speak. Recall there are two cameras per instrument, plus two spares.
• The enclosure fabricator is eager to deliver a literal ton of stainless steel! (907kg for those of you appropriately offended by imperial units, or 41.7 billion Planck masses for the particle physicists)
• The plan calls for at least three new observatories spanning the western hemisphere, and we’ve already gotten initial agreement from 2 of these ideal and exciting observatories!

(Ok, I lied: one picture)

And perhaps most importantly, we’ve also secured a large part of the estimated $540k minimum funding required to do this next phase!  While we’re not currently planning another crowdfunding campaign, federal funding is only slowly reawakening to SETI, so we’re still a privately funded effort.  If you or someone you know would like to continue to support us, please go to https://seti.org/givenow, check “Write us a comment,” and mention LaserSETI.

I hope you’re as excited as the whole LaserSETI team is about where we’re heading, both geographically and upwards. I look forward to writing the next update on First Light at Haleakala!

October 22, 2020

It’s exciting times for LaserSETI!  In this update we’ll talk about the state of the instruments, both in California and Hawaii, and deployment plans for installing the latter.

As probably many of you heard, the fire season this year in California was unprecedented.  Those of us in the Bay Area will likely always remember the Day It Looked Like Mars, which was a little bit neat for those of us who’ve dreamt of living on the Red Planet, but mostly scary –  a pretty good simulation of a nuclear winter, perhaps.  The most recent set of fires, generally referred to as the Glass Fires, did actually enter Sugarloaf Ridge Park where Ferguson Observatory and our LaserSETI CA instruments reside.  Fortunately, CalFire proactively protected the observatory and worked hard to keep the fires from pushing any further south into the park.  We’ll continue to work closely with the great team at Ferguson to do everything we can to keep the observatory safe, and our hearts go out to all those affected by these catastrophes.  It really hits home for us at the SETI Institute when one of our colleagues lost his home in the Lightning Complex fires in the Santa Cruz mountains.

(You can follow Ferguson Observatory here)

The evacuation orders have lifted but Sugarloaf Ridge Park is still “closed for infrastructure repairs.”  So, unfortunately, after a week of not being able to observe due to the smoke in the sky, we were then without power for over a week, and just got back on the sky two nights ago.  But just last night, as a precautionary measure, I stopped the observing process and secured the instruments, because Pacific Gas & Electric started forecasting a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) in our area.  When weather deemed hazardous to their infrastructure is forecasted, they shut power off to avoid starting more fires.  This isn’t the first time in the past year that we’ve had extended observing interference, but I think it’s now the longest, most complicated, and dramatic!

As soon as possible, I’ll be heading up to check on the instruments and do some upgrades. I never saw any significant soot accumulate on the enclosure windows, but it’s a good time to double check and replace the air filters. I’ve got new light baffles which should have greater longevity and will reduce the pressure on the sunshade opening. And most importantly, I’ve got new LaserSETI decals to put on the covers, since we had to remove the old ones when we applied the white thermal paint.

Speaking of which, I thought everyone would enjoy seeing the newly built and tested instruments. It’s all white but the covers are white thermal paint to help keep the instruments cool, while the rest is simply powder coated so the instrument will blend in in situ. You can see the piano hinge of the new wiring box design which not only saves money, but makes it much easier to access that space. My favorite improvement, though, are the handles on the cover. That component weighs about 60 lbs. so now it’s much easier to remove and put back on! You can also see the new relays underneath the power distro box in the front, which now allow both computers to be rebooted by the other, in addition to the original capability of rebooting the cameras.  If you want to learn more about the components and design, let us know and we can have a Facebook Live or dedicated update.

Long story short, the instruments here in California have taught us a lot on how the designs could be improved.  The differences may not be immediately apparent to the untrained eye—which I suppose is a positive sign that our designs were pretty good to start with—but there are over two dozen separate improvements to the enclosure and supporting electronics.  All of these have been incorporated into the two new instruments soon heading for Hawaii, and as many as possible retrofitted on the instruments installed at Ferguson.  There’s not a lot we can do about the wildfires, high winds, power outages, and pandemics that slowed progress and interfere with observing, but we’ll keep doing whatever we can to be prepared and adjusting as necessary!

And finally, the big news is we’re finally able to announce our location in Hawaii. The University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy has agreed to host the two instruments shown above on the summit of Haleakala on the island of Maui!  The site is at 10,000 feet above sea level (3000m) and is absolutely outstanding. 

As you can see on this rendering, we created for the state Site Plan Approval application, our neighbors will be PANSTARRS 1 and 2, another awesome project focused on transients!  And if you were wondering why that truss was underneath one of the instruments in the previous picture, now you know: so we can see over the railing.  It was no simple matter, however, for it to be able to tolerate winds over 130 mph!  The other instrument doesn’t need that, as you can see from the rendering below. 

We’re working on the shipping and final installation details now, but the good news is at least Hawaii’s mandatory 2-week COVID quarantine can now be bypassed with a negative rest result within 72 hours of flight departure.  As it stands, we’re shooting for First Light to happen before the end of this year! It is 2020, though, so I would hold off ‘cashing that check’ until installation actually happens!

As usual, we’ll have a lot more to talk about in our next installment, probably 4 to 6 weeks from now, and I think you’ll find it worth the wait. As always, thanks so very much for all your support!

June 13, 2020

Hello, greetings, and well-wishes to you and yours!

There have been so many unprecedented goings-on in the world since our last update!  First and foremost, I hope everyone is staying safe and sane, as well as taking care of those around us who can use our help.  We’re all stuck together on this rock called Earth, hurtling through space, and there’s no higher calling than taking care of each other.

As for LaserSETI, progress is the name of the game.  The components we build in-house are nearly complete.  You can see many of the “unsung” components that go into the environmental and electronic support systems below.  Last week, I visited the enclosure fabricator to review their just-completed parts and finalize the plan for painting them!

We have the least visibility on the site permit application with the state of Hawaii.  The document was delivered by our university partner nearly two months ago, but the Dept of Land and Natural Resources is undoubtedly affected by the pandemic and not on their normal timeline for responding.  We’re glad they’re operating at all in these crazy times and remain optimistic for a smooth approval process in a timeframe which matches the instrument build, testing, and shipment process.  I have the utmost confidence in our Hawaiian partners and sometimes, once you’ve done your best, all you can do is keep your fingers crossed.

The next few months promise to be exciting and eventful in so many ways.  As always, we’ll keep you up to date and thanks again for your support!

March 23, 2020

A lot has been going on and I wanted to tell you about it personally!  In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Eliot Gillum and the principal investigator for LaserSETI.

Our last update was the exciting announcement that LaserSETI was installed at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sonoma County in Northern California.  It was mostly pictures to help share the feeling of it all, but this update will be a lot more text, as I want to share some of the “hands on” behind the scenes action of commissioning a new instrument.  In case that’s not your thing, I won’t be offended if you skip to the end for the exciting announcements.

Before getting into the specifics, I should say that, while none of the specific issues were anticipated (or else we would’ve addressed it ahead of time!), the general types and quantity were as expected.  A sensitive instrument in an outdoor environment is always going to require tweaks.  I also think it’s worth noting that—knock on wood—no “big scary” types of problems happened; nothing that threatened the design or instrument health.

The first issue encountered was the interior temperature within the enclosure rising too high during the day, such that the cameras’ coolers were unable to maintain the CCDs at 0°C.  This wasn’t an immediate problem because we can’t observe during the day, but the thermal cycling and extremes weren’t good for the equipment and, since we’ll be deploying to other parts of the globe that might be hotter than Northern California, it was important to get ahead of this.  The problem wasn’t so much internally generated heat or ambient external, but insolation—direct sunlight.  Our first course of action was to paint the cover with a special white thermal paint (see below) to dramatically increase the albedo (amount of light reflected) as well as aid radiative cooling from inside (see Figure 1).  We also subsequently switched the color of the 3D-printed components to white, embedded mirrors in the sunshade, and improved the airflow from the instrument bay down to the wiring “bunker” where the exhaust fan and ports are located.

Figure 1 – LaserSETI covers after being painted white with specialized thermal paint

As some of you are likely aware, when 3D printing, a wide variety of different plastics can be used, each with their own unique properties: hardness, texture, impact strength, thermal, etc.  At the high end, some very expensive materials are possible, as well as outsourcing to specialized shops with high end machines.  But since one of LaserSETI’s fundamental principles is “low cost to achieve global coverage,” we have focused on “in-sourcing” the printing to keep costs low.  We had started with ABS plastic, which is used for everything from LEGOs to hand tools, but our ABS printer started being unable to print large pieces and not even the manufacturer could figure out how. We decided to back off to PLA, which is much easier to work with and hope that the parts we used it for wouldn’t experience high enough thermal and mechanical loads.  Unfortunately, its lower softening point conspired with the initially high internal temperatures, and we’ve had to replace all the PLA parts.  The plastic we’re now using is polycarbonate, which has ideal thermal properties but required a new printer.  The parts take longer to print but come out very high quality, although the printer has also proven itself a lot of work to keep operating smoothly.

To keep peeling the onion, while the polycarbonate plastic is a great improvement overall, switching to it exposed a flaw in the gear tooth shape we’d designed into the sunshade mechanism.  Since polycarbonate is more rigid, the sunshade started binding when approximately 75% open.  Fortunately, we were at least still able to observe in that condition, while we investigated the problem.  Once diagnosed, it was easy enough to design a better tooth, re-print the gears and sunshades, and re-install them on our next visit.  In Figure 2, below, you can see the new trapezoidal gear tooth, as well as the mirrors added to reject additional heat from the sun.

Figure 2 – Interior view from pi camera: sunshade with embedded mirror, stepper motor, outside view

Besides the heat, the weather has thrown some other curve balls.  Now that it’s winter, we expected more cloudy nights, which is partially compensated for by the longer nights to observe—and we’ve had some really great ones!  Additionally, high winds have been an unexpected issue, since the power company aggressively shuts down power over large areas, in order to avoid more tragic firestorms like the Tubbs Fire of 2017.  At one point, we were down for two weeks as the power went out and came back.  Then, to add injury to insult, the power fluctuations were enough to damage the Ferguson VPN server, which required more time to replace.  The silver lining has been a thorough test of the LaserSETI electrical systems, which passed with flying colors!

Figure 3 – Raspberry Pi at top center, humidity sensor, camera, motor, and GPS antenna cables visible

One piece of hardware which hasn’t been robust enough, however, is the Raspberry Pi single-board computer used in each instrument as its the central nervous system.  It’s responsible for wide range of tasks, from monitoring environmental sensors, to controlling the sunshade, to the interior camera, to super accurate time using a specialized GPS.  We build and solder all these various components ourselves and had initially optimized the design for a low profile, not knowing exactly how much clearance we had with the cover.  Faced with transient electrical failures that were clearly related to thermal expansion and observing that we had enough spacing from the cover, we’ve greatly simplified the electronics design with the double benefits of making it more robust and easier to build!

The specialized GPS setup is interesting area for more detail.  Most people know that GPS determines your location, but not everyone realizes it does that by determining the time very accurately: usually within hundreds of nanoseconds.  LaserSETI uses this to synchronize observations across observatories, so we can match observations with confidence and even measure the arrival time delay based on the source direction!  We’re using a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) GPS but with an additional wire called PPS, meaning “pulse per second.”  This little wire has a “positive edge” at the precise beginning of each second and greatly improves the timing accuracy over the simple position reports via the serial port.  At least, in theory, that is.  It took months of reading, experimenting, and tuning to optimize the configuration so that the raspberry pi is accurate to within a dozen microseconds, and the PCs are usually within 100 microseconds! 

Figure 4 – Screenshot of real-time monitoring of clock delays (in microseconds)

Now, the system is so accurate, the biggest daily disturbance is when the sunlight suddenly hits the GPS antenna or goes away, because of the rapid change in temperature!  In Figured 4 above, sunny days are yellow, cloudy are circled in white, and partly cloudy days in gray.  And to try to address even this variability, we’ve designed a new GPS antenna mount with a sunshade, which we’re told looks like one of the bad guys from Super Mario (see Figure 5 below).

Figure 5 – GPS mount with new “Mario” sunshade, designed to reduce thermal shock causing clock drift

Another electronics issue has been a few random computer lockups.  LaserSETI was designed to handle flaky cameras with relays so they could be power cycled, but not the PC or Raspberry Pi.  We’ve now added a relay so the pi can reboot the PC, and are rewiring the PC-controlled relays to move both cameras onto a single relay, freeing up the other to allow it to reboot the Pi.  The Ferguson staff have been very accommodating and helpful in so many ways, but we don’t want to ask more than necessary of them, plus as we go to Hawaii and beyond it’s critical the instrument is able to be self-healing.

Having taken data for months, we wanted to be able to examine it in detail, but we couldn’t exactly upload 13 TB (13 million megabytes) over the satellite link that connects Ferguson to the outside world.  Forced to resort to “SneakerNet”, we built a 30 TB disk array, which has worked great—ever since a certain online retailer sent the right type of disks.  We’ll continue to use this array to keep as much data as we can in the long term, for analysis and sharing too!

Figure 6 – Snapshot of controller software while observing recently

Because of all the work above, I’m pleased to share that we’ve begun building the second round of two instruments: the ones going to Hawaii.  Now because our 33-page site permit application isn’t yet approved, we’re still not able to announce the exact location, but I think that’ll come in our next update.  What I can say is that the cameras, the most expensive part of the instrument, have been built and shipped, the instrument design improved from electronics to steel, the fabricator has begun cutting and welding, and the 3D printer is running overtime. 

While the engineering behind LaserSETI is fun, I know we’re all in it for the science.  But since the plan for publishing the full instrument results involves having both observatories taking data, I thought we could at least offer a preview of what we’ve seen thus far.  Bear in mind that, because we’re still working out the kinks in the commissioning process and don’t have Hawaii online yet, this is based on less than quarter of the system’s full observational capability, as funded by you.  What I can say is that we haven’t yet identified any events that met our detection criteria and were seen simultaneously by both cameras within the instrument.  We will, of course, keep taking more data every night it’s possible.  And we’re reviewing the raw data, as well as detector thresholds and algorithms—now that we’ve got a lot more data to work with—to check for potential bugs or improvements.

I’d like to offer a brief preview for future updates.  Our next one will probably be just before or after installing the instruments in Hawaii—after they’ve been built, tested, and shipped.  Beyond that, we’ve got some exciting secondary (non-SETI) science to talk about, as well where LaserSETI will go after the culmination of this campaign.

Finally, I want to thank every single one of you for your support.  While we certainly can’t buy parts and pay contractors without funding, knowing that there’s hundreds of people around the world who were just as excited about LaserSETI has meant the world to me and definitely provided extra motivation to make the project the most it can be!

August 21, 2019

This is the update we’ve been working all this time to send and you’ve been waiting for: LaserSETI is installed and pointed at the sky!  As a result, we’re mostly going to let the pictures do the talking in this update.

A panorama gives the best overview of the installation on the Ferguson Observatory roof.

But this more zoomed-in view shows the instruments better.

And here you can see the northwest-facing unit basking in the sun and gorgeous Sonoma scenery.

A closeup of the rear of the instruments shows the GPS, power and networking ingress, and heat exhaust “tailpipes.”

A bit more artistic than scientific, this shot highlights the transmission grating at the front of the “optical train” with the Sun reflecting many times off the various internal surfaces.

Perhaps most importantly, here’s some of the incredible Ferguson team taking a quick break from their hard work to pose for the camera!

We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing LaserSETI set up as much as we have! 

As with any new telescope or observatory, all the engineering must be tested and qualified before we can start doing science.  We expect the next update to discuss any issues encountered and hopefully include our first “science-ready” images!

July 24, 2019

I’m pleased to announce that plans are nearly complete for the first LaserSETI installation: at the Robert Ferguson Observatory (RFO) in Sonoma County, California! LaserSETI Principal Investigator, Eliot Gillum, has built a collaborative and productive relationship between the SETI Institute and RFO, after locating the site based on complex astronomical suitability criteria. Working closely with RFO founding board member Dr. Gordon Spear, RFO Board President Dave Kensiski, and RFO Executive Director Chris Cable, the final logistics are being worked out for the placement of LaserSETI’s first observatory at RFO’s idyllic facility.

Dr. Spear, who is also Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Sonoma State University, said he is “extremely excited” at the prospect that RFO will be partnering with the SETI Institute, adding significantly to the scientific research being performed at RFO, since their primary mission is focused on education. RFO hosts numerous events, field trips, and a steady stream of drop-ins from the public, adding up to more than 8000 visitors each year. We hope that you will take advantage of this location to visit LaserSETI. RFO has been a 100% volunteer organization since its founding in 2000, until recently hiring its first executive director.

Andrew Fraknoi, SETI Institute Trustee and Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Foothill College, provided the initial introduction to Dr. Spear, who became immediately intrigued by LaserSETI’s novel approach to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “We’re thrilled to be able to make a difference for SETI in this way,” stated Dr. Spear. “There were some challenges gaining the buy-in of other board members.” He described that even with an educated group of astronomy advocates, the idea of SETI was not immediately well understood. But after sharing information about the SETI Institute and the LaserSETI proposal, the RFO board members quickly understood that not only is SETI extremely serious science, LaserSETI itself is cutting edge. Learning about the SETI Institute’s expansive public outreach and education programs “really sealed the deal.” 

The SETI Institute looks forward to working closely with RFO to create a LaserSETI exhibit within RFO’s museum and classroom. We are now beginning discussions around educational programming opportunities upon which to collaborate, as well.

And, while it’s premature to make a formal announcement, I’m excited to share that we have been in discussions with an observatory in Hawaii for placing a matching set of LaserSETI instruments there, to pair with those at RFO.  We’ve cleared a number of important hurdles and are very optimistic about having that site online soon after the RFO site is established.

So stay tuned for some very exciting LaserSETI announcements very shortly! 

April 5, 2019

Greetings LaserSETI supporters.  Many of you may have been wondering if the project was proceeding, but I write today to assure you it has and provide a comprehensive report on our progress these past 9 months since we last updated you.  We apologize for the stall in our communications to you, and will definitely improve the pace of our reports to you as we drive forward to deployment on the sky!

At the time of the last update, in June 2018, two LaserSETI cameras were mounted with their gratings, and lenses into 3-D printed mounts, and fabrication of their environmental, stainless steel enclosure was anticipated to start within the week in accordance with detailed CAD drawings. First light on the observing system of 2 enclosures (4 cameras) was estimated to be 4 months away. 

So, here we are 10 months later, having worked through an intensive Devil-is-in-the-details epoch—and, where are we?  Very close!  The instruments are fully built and undergoing the last test required before going out under the sky.

Fabrication

The CAD drawings for this component underwent several modification cycles to make sure the first two units manufactured would be as close as possible to the final configuration to be deployed globally.  East Bay Machine and Sheet Metal in Concord CA was selected to do the precision component manufacturing because of their previous experience with astronomical observatories and their expertise in working stainless steel. Injury on their staff caused the delivery date to slip to late October.

The delivered units, due to the difficulties in stainless steel welding, contained an unanticipated and uneven gap between the cover and base of the enclosure.  This was eventually sealed with a combination of silicone rubber sheet and weather-resistant EPDM foam. Two 200 mm diameter, 6mm thick, optically flat Borofloat windows were sealed in place with E6800 industrial adhesive and tested by floating the cover upside-down as well as outside in winter rains, to validate all the waterproof seals. Cameras, gratings, motorized shutter windows, a Raspberry Pi 2b control computer with a GPS-based microsecond-accurate time server and environmental sensor suite, MERV13 air filter, Intel PCs for image processing, 10 TB hard disk for data archiving, and a 12VDC power distribution block with fuses were installed, wired, and tested inside the two enclosures. Care was taken with component placement and individual light baffles were implemented to ensure that no light from the various LEDs could enter the cameras. 

Once all the equipment was installed and the enclosure sealed, thermal testing began and identified an inadequacy in heat elimination: the camera-powered exhaust system, which had already been scaled back to support cover removal, wasn’t pushing heat efficiently enough out of the enclosure, causing the cameras to warm up.  Several simple designs were tested, and the most effective design was an “active tailpipe,” shown below.  A single high-quality computer fan sits behind these two downward-facing exhausts, forcing a strong outward airflow, through a stainless-steel mesh which protects against ingress of foreign objects, while the large area of the MERV13 filter lets in clean, cool air into the instrument bay. The system now keeps the camera bodies within 4C of internal ambient temperature which in turn is within 10C of external ambient—a good balance to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Site Deployment

While our original plan was to partner with an optical observatory in California, we ultimately decided on the Hat Creek Radio Observatory—home of the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array. Since LaserSETI’s unique imaging technique adds up light across its whole field of view, it was a better site because the lower light pollution levels mean more sensitivity to faint signals.  

There are other synergies associated with this choice of a SETI-focused facility, but one obvious problem: this is a radio astronomy facility, and therefore particularly sensitive to RFI (radio frequency interference) potentially generated by the digital components of LaserSETI.  As such, it is necessary to ensure that the additional electronics does not interfere with the sidelobes of the extremely sensitive telescopes. A test plan to evaluate LaserSETI against ITU Rec 279 has been developed and is to be executed soon.  This is the last remaining test, necessarily coming after all other modifications to the instrument and enclosure.

We will perform the tests in the shield room at Minex Engineering in Antioch, CA. We will use an ATA “feed” as the receiver and test at all frequencies from 1 to 10 GHz (the frequencies at which the ATA operates) using a spectrum analyzer programmed to step the receiver frequency band with 10 Hz spectral resolution, maximizing lab sensitivity to any squeak Laser SETI might emit.  At this resolution, it takes just under 10 seconds for each 1 MHz of bandwidth tested, so something over a day for the full scan.  We’re planning on a week to complete these tests. This is an unanticipated requirement, but one that makes a great deal of sense, both now for this first deployment but also future sites around the globe where the ideal site may again be a radio observatory.

Assuming no significant and difficult issues are found in the RFI testing, deployment is now projected for late April or early May. Then we begin the first operational phase: seeing every aspect of the carefully designed and tested system validated in the field—and gathering enough observational data to begin to analyze Laser SETI’s unique window on the universe!

June 7, 2018

Thanks to the over 6000 people who tuned in yesterday, and especially those that participated in the discussion!

But we’ve got good news for those that weren’t able to fit the live time slot into their busy lives.  The recording is available now to watch anytime!

Finally, in related breaking news, NASA’s Curiosity rover team just announced the discovery of large organic molecules on Mars!