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Astronomy with Small Telescopes
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Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0609161

From: Bohdan Paczynski [view email]

Date (v1): Wed, 6 Sep 2006 15:13:17 GMT (12kb)
Date (revised v2): Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:45:22 GMT (12kb)
Date (revised v3): Tue, 7 Nov 2006 16:14:02 GMT (13kb)

Astronomy with Small Telescopes

Authors: Bohdan Paczynski

Comments: 11 pages, accepted to PASP minor changes to the text

The All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) is monitoring all sky to about 14 mag with a cadence of about 1 day; it has discovered about 10^5 variable stars, most of them new. The instrument used for the survey had aperture of 7 cm. A search for planetary transits has lead to the discovery of about a dozen confirmed planets, so called 'hot Jupiters', providing the information of planetary masses and radii. Most discoveries were done with telescopes with aperture of 10 cm.

We propose a search for optical transients covering all sky with a cadence of 10 - 30 minutes and the limit of 12 - 14 mag, with an instant verification of all candidate events. The search will be made with a large number of 10 cm instruments, and the verification will be done with 30 cm instruments.

We also propose a system to be located at the L_1 point of the Earth - Sun system to detect 'killer asteroids'. With a limiting magnitude of about 18 mag it could detect 10 m boulders several hours prior to their impact, provide warning against Tunguska-like events, as well as to provide news about spectacular but harmless more modest impacts.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609161

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