Panoramic SETI: Overall mechanical system design

PANOSETI (Pulsed All-Sky Near-infrared Optical Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is a dedicated SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) observatory that is being designed to observe 4,441 sq. deg. to search for nano- to milli-second transient events. The observatory system is constructed to have 90 identical optical 0.5m telescopes that each have a 92.2 square degree field of view. The two observatory sites will be separated by 1 km distance to help eliminate false positives and register a definitive signal. We discuss the overall mechanical design of the telescope modules which includes a Fresnel lens housing, a shutter, three baffles, an 32x32 array of Hamamatsu Multi-Photon Pixel Counting (MPPC) detectors that reside on a linear stage for focusing. Each telescope module will be housed in a triangle of a 3rd tessellation frequency geodesic dome. Each observatory will have an enclosure to protect the experiment, and an observatory room for operations and electronics.