The recent discovery of sub-second, bright, optical flashes in the night sky has generated questions about their origin. Are they all just a class of previously unknown glints from space debris? Or are some of the flashes of astrophysical origin? We discuss a stereoscopic ranging system, currently under construction, designed to detect bright flashes during a two-year observational survey and discriminate, on a flash-by-flash basis, foreground space debris glints from astrophysical flashes. The survey will enable a search for sub-second astrophysical flashes with an estimated sensitivity that is at least an order of magnitude better than existing limits.
Advances in refracting optics and consumer-grade digital cameras have come together in an unconventional approach to telescope design, disrupting the field of low surface brightness astronomy. A new telescope design, first demonstrated on the Dragonfly array, employs arrays of telephoto lenses, enabling optical surveys reaching depths of 31 mag/arcsec2. The ultimate limits of this new approach are yet to be established. The Los Alamos Low Surface Brightness Array (LA-LSBA) is a new sixteen element telephoto array for ultra-low surface brightness astronomy. This array introduces a heterogeneous design, where the use of multiple pixel sizes allows for deep surveys that are less prone to source confusion. First light with this new instrument was achieved in the Winter of 2019, and science observations are underway.
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