Exploring the transient sky with the Fly's Eye Camera System

Mészáros, L. and Pál, A. and Csépány, G. and Vida, Krisztián and Kriskovics, L. (2019) Exploring the transient sky with the Fly's Eye Camera System. REVISTA MEXICANA DE ASTRONOMIA Y ASTROFISICA-SERIE DE CONFERENCIAS, 51. pp. 116-123. ISSN 1405-2059

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Abstract

To study astrophysical transit phenomena we follow an alternative strategy for getting high-cadence observations of the field. This can be achieved with our new Fly’s Eye Camera System that monitors the entire sky above 30◦horizontal altitude. With this instrument one can observe all phenomena brighter than∼15min Sloan r-band (u’, g’,i’ and z’ filters are also available). If we stack together a few hour of images we can observe∼17mfaint sources. This small-sized instrument is designed for time-domain astronomy with its150 sec cadence. Due to the hexapod-based motion control, the instrument can be installed anywhere without any modifications, it can accomplish sky tracking automatically. These parallel robots have 6 degrees of freedom (DoF), but since any kind of rotation can be done by using only 3 DoF, the tracking with hexapods is independent from the geographical coordinates. Even polar alignment is not required, because Fly’s Eye can calibrate itself based on its own observed data. The system is optimal for time-domain astronomy: detecting novae, supernovae, optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts and other bright, fast transients, and, from the observation database such data can be obtained - even from before the discovery of the transient event. In the future when the direction of the gravitational waves will be defined precisely we will be able to detect their first multiwaveband counterparts. In addition the Fly’s Eye will support the “Transient Astrophysical Objects”project which will use two new 80 cm robotic telescopes for follow-up observations of transients.

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