Description
The Sheffield Nova Balloon Lifted Telescope (SunbYte) project started in 2016 and involved close collaboration between students and academics from The University of Sheffield, Hull University, Northumbria University, and Queen's University Belfast. The project also has strong support from industry: Andor Technology Ltd, Harmonic Drive AG, RS Components and space agencies ESA, NASA (HASP), DLR, and SSC. Since 2016 students have developed four generations of autonomous telescopes and have had successful test launch missions in the USA (Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, Fort Sumner) and Sweden (Esrange Space Center). SunbYte is a fully autonomous robotic control system for solar tracking and observational applications onboard high-altitude balloons. The high-altitude solar observational system includes low-cost components such as a Cassegrain-type telescope, stepper motors, harmonic drives, USB cameras and microprocessors. OpenCV was installed from ROS (Robotic Operating System), and Python and C facilitated the collection, compression, and processing of housekeeping and scientific data.
In this presentation, we describe the instrumental design, our testing and the upcoming 2026 launch schedule, and discuss potential science use cases for the instrument, including potentially unique wavelength coverage for solar observations.
