Now is your chance to fund a groundbreaking SETI project

Laser SETI will look at the entire sky all the time, searching for pulses of light generated by extraterrestrial civilizations.

Courtesy of Eliot Gillum & Laser SETI

For decades, astronomers have been searching the skies for a sign that we are not alone in the universe. Today, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute spearheads this undertaking, constantly developing better ways to distinguish an artificial signal from an astrophysical phenomenon and designing surveys that will provide the coverage needed to receive that message when it comes. But developing a search that covers the whole sky all the time has been so challenging that astronomers have been putting it off for decades, despite the obvious benefits — but finally, this is a challenge that Laser SETI now aims to overcome.

That’s right — Laser SETI will be the first ever all-sky-all-the-time SETI survey.

A Look at Laser SETI
Laser SETI is currently undertaking a fundraising campaign, following two years of initial development to design the software and camera systems needed to watch the entire sky all the time. The project focuses on using cost-effective equipment: Two of the system’s three components are off-the-shelf technology, coupling a commercially available CCD camera with a 24mm f/1.4 DSLR lens. Each camera has a field of view 72 degrees across, resulting in an effective coverage of over 1,700 square degrees! That’s about 4 percent of the entire night sky and 5,600 times larger than previous optical SETI experiments. That’s wide enough that only 4 cameras are required to cover an observatory’s field of view, which is 120 degrees across and one-sixth of the entire night sky. Each camera splits the light it receives with a spectroscopic grating in front of the lens to allow observers to identify the wavelength of any signals received and discard signals that aren’t a single color of light.

The cameras are read out so quickly (more than 1,000 times a second) that they “smear” the data they receive vertically, but Laser SETI ensures no information is lost by coupling two cameras together in different orientations to cover each section of sky. This way, a source can still be pinpointed, despite the smearing effect of each camera. Then, by building multiple observatories at key points around the globe, Laser SETI can cover the entirety of the sky with truly continuous observations.

Laser SETI uses a spectroscopic grating to identify signals that are monochromatic (a single color of light, like a laser pulse, seen at the bottom of the image). Stars are not monochromatic and can be easily dismissed by the spectra they produce (top of the image).

Courtesy of Eliot Gillum

The project’s initial goal is to raise $100,000 for the installation of and operation of two cameras in a single observatory. Although this won’t achieve full-sky coverage, it will cover a more limited portion of sky while proving the system can work. The project’s fundraising goal is also expandable; with $510,000, Laser SETI can establish and run its first two fully equipped observatories.

The campaign is up and running now, with a month left for backers to contribute to this groundbreaking SETI project.