Posted on: Sunday, July 8, 2001
Company will build telescope cameras for NASA
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
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| Doug Toomey is the owner and sole employee of Hilo-based Mauna Kea Infrared.
Jan Tenbruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser • On the Web: |
The universe just expanded for Doug Toomey, a single parent of two sons who has a part-time job at the University of Hawai'i and runs a small business on the side in Hilo.
The small business, with Toomey as owner and sole employee, designs, builds and tests infrared instruments for telescopes, and it just picked up a $4.18 million NASA contract to build a sophisticated infrared camera for the Gemini telescopes on Mauna Kea and in Chile.
It is an example of exactly the kind of high-tech industry spinoff the University of Hawai'i works toward, said Rolf-Peter Kudritzki, director of the university's Institute for Astronomy.
"The Institute for Astronomy really is a technology engine," Kudritzki said.
Toomey, 45, has a degree in electronics engineering and has spent most of his career with the Institute for Astronomy, building infrared detection instruments that are bolted onto telescopes. He started with the university 20 years ago as a technician, and a few years later started his company, Mauna Kea Infrared.
Most recently, Toomey built a $730,000 infrared camera for the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., that measures star positions.
That one was several times larger than his previous job, but both pale in the light of his latest, for which he has assembled a team of astronomers, engineers and others — about half from Hawai'i and all working as subcontractors.
The NASA contract gives Toomey less than four years to build a "near infrared coronagraphic imager" for the Gemini Telescopes in Hawai'i and Chile.
The new instrument will combine a number of advanced imaging technologies to help scientists learn more about how planetary systems form around stars. To do this, the instrument will block out the light from the stars themselves in order to see objects within their solar systems, such as planets and dust clouds.
Normally, objects near a star can't be seen through telescopes because of the blinding brightness of its light.
Toomey's instrument will collect two images at once, each at a slightly different wavelength. By processing the two images into one, the image of the star itself can be canceled out, and light from features immediately around the star can be picked out.
The new device will view in the infrared portion of the light spectrum. It will correct for disturbances caused by the Earth's atmosphere using adaptive optics — another area of expertise at the Institute for Astronomy.
The Gemini instrument, when complete, will weigh a couple of tons and will be the size of a phone booth. Mirrors will direct light from the Gemini telescope to the instrument.
"We don't know exactly what we'll find. We don't know what's there to be found," Toomey said.
It's cutting-edge skywatching.
Toomey worries that the remarkably technical nature of the project will obscure the fact that this high-tech stuff is being done in Hawai'i, that it brings dollars into the Islands' economy, and that it shows that the University of Hawai'i is spinning off technological expertise into the private sector.
"It's a little strange to have an employee go off and compete for this kind of a contract, but the university is supporting technology transfer ... This is a really good example of research techniques developed at the University of Hawai'i" having applications outside the school, Toomey said.
Bob McLaren, the Institute for Astronomy's associate director for Mauna Kea, said a number of its employees moonlight for their own businesses or for others, and some have left to establish sophisticated technology enterprises.
"It is a sort of spinoff from UH research activities," McLaren said.
Toomey said it would be difficult for a single company to have the expertise in-house to accomplish as complicated a task as the near infrared coronagraphic imager. One of the benefits of being a tiny company is that he can hire exactly the personnel and expertise he needs for a specific project.
"It's a really powerful way to build a team," Toomey said.
In anticipation of assembling the instrument, Toomey is shopping for a building where he plans to establish a laboratory in Hilo with a dust-free "clean room." Once the Gemini project is complete, the lab can be used for work on other kinds of equipment.
Meanwhile, Toomey will keep his part-time university job, in part because he feels it's more interesting to him over time than what his business does.
"If I went full time with Mauna Kea Infrared, I'd just be building the same instrument over and over. At the UH, I do more research," he said.
