Skynet’s New Observing Mode: The Campaign Manager

Built in 2004, the Skynet robotic telescope network originally consisted of six 0.4 m telescopes located at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Chilean Andes. The network was designed to carry out simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) when they are only tens of seconds old. To date, the network has been expanded to ≈20 telescopes, including a 20 m radio telescope, that span four continents and five countries. The Campaign Manager (CM) is a new observing mode that has been developed for Skynet. Available to all Skynet observers, the CM semi-autonomously and indefinitely scales and schedules exposures on the observer’s behalf while allowing for modification to scaling parameters in real time. The CM is useful for follow up to various transient phenomena including gravitational-wave events, GRB localizations, young supernovae, and eventually, sufficiently bright Argus Optical Array and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope events.

A Pair of Warm Giant Planets near the 2:1 Mean Motion Resonance around the K-dwarf Star TOI-2202*

TOI-2202 b is a transiting warm Jovian-mass planet with an orbital period of P = 11.91 days identified from the Full Frame Images data of five different sectors of the TESS mission. Ten TESS transits of TOI-2202 b combined with three follow-up light curves obtained with the CHAT robotic telescope show strong transit timing variations (TTVs) with an amplitude of about 1.2 hr. Radial velocity follow-up with FEROS, HARPS, and PFS confirms the planetary nature of the transiting candidate (a b = 0.096 ± 0.001 au, m b = 0.98 ± 0.06 M Jup), and a dynamical analysis of RVs, transit data, and TTVs points to an outer Saturn-mass companion (a c = 0.155 ± 0.002 au, m c = 0.37 ± 0.10 M Jup) near the 2:1 mean motion resonance. Our stellar modeling indicates that TOI-2202 is an early K-type star with a mass of 0.82 M ⊙, a radius of 0.79 R ⊙, and solar-like metallicity. The TOI-2202 system is very interesting because of the two warm Jovian-mass planets near the 2:1 mean motion resonance, which is a rare configuration, and their formation and dynamical evolution are still not well understood.

LONG-TERM PHOTOMETRY WITH SKYNET ROBOTIC TELESCOPE NETWORK

In this paper, we describe the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network, a network of about 2 dozen small optical telescopes spanning four continents. For a prospective user of the network, we provide details on its operation and mention certain caveats potentially affecting observations taken under the control of Skynet software. The actual performance of the network is demonstrated by long-term observations of two blazars: OJ 49 and 3C 279. We show their photometric light curves acquired with a subset of Skynet telescopes in the 2018/19 observing seasons. Preliminary results of the analysis of the variability of these two targets are given, including the quantitative properties of light variations and the periods of possible Quasi Periodic Oscillations (QPOs) found in the seasonal light curves.

THE 4 M NEW ROBOTIC TELESCOPE PROJECT: AN UPDATED REPORT

The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is an international collaboration to build and operate a 4m diameter fully robotic telescope. The telescope will take advantage of the superb atmospheric conditions at the Observatory of the Roque de los Muchachos (ORM). In conjunction with a large aperture, entirely robotic operation, quick response, and a set of versatile instrumentation in the optical and near-infrared this guarantees a high scientific impact focused mainly in the area of time domain astronomy. This paper presents the scientific motivation and the status of the project, discussing possible technical solutions under evaluation for the optics, mechanics and control system.

GALAXY-TARGETED ROBOTIC TELESCOPE FOLLOW-UP OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE EVENTS

Robotic telescopes and networks are well equipped to respond rapidly to transient events. However, the era of multi-messenger astronomy presents new challenges in the search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave events. Specifically, these sources can be distant, faint, poorly localised, and quickly decaying. Effciently searching for counterparts requires coverage of large localisation regions and/or targeted observations. This paper presents a galaxy retrieval and ranking algorithm for targeted observations, and a public web interface to retrieve ranked galaxy lists following a gravitational wave event. The website is publicly available at https://gwtool.watchertelescope.ie/.

NEW IMPROVEMENTS AT TUG-T60 ROBOTIC TELESCOPE

TUBITAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) National Observatory T60 Robotic Telescope is controlled by open source OCAAS software, formally named as TALON. The telescope was installed in 2008. It is still young, but the obsolescence will come for the telescope eventually. Therefore the modernization and improvements are needed to make the telescope lifecycle longer. In this study, we present the developments and modernization works to enhance the T60 maintainability.

Analysis of physical properties of the HAT-P-12b planetary system

The exoplanet HAT-P-12b was observed at the Sierra Remote Observatories by a 0.7 meters diameter reflective robotic telescope CDK700 with the CCD photometric technique. This research using 317 images of the HAT-P-12b on April 14, 2017. They were analyzed the photometric photometry and calculated the physical properties by the AstroImageJ program. The results show that the radius of the exoplanet HAT-P-12b is 0.951 RJ, orbital period P about 3.2105 days. The center of page traverse Tc is 2457857.166110000 (BJD) and the total time of traverse T is 0.093519 days. The Star and Exoplanet View program was created the HAT-P-12b model that the decreasing brightness with 1.94864 percent the average distance between the exoplanet HAT-P-12b and the center is 0.0388 AU.

CONNECTING THE FORMATION OF STARS AND PLANETS. I – SPECTROSCOPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF HOST STARS WITH TIGRE

In search for a connection between the formation of stars and the formation of planets, a new semi-automatic spectral analysis method using iSpec was developed for the TIGRE telescope installed in Guanajuato, Mexico. TIGRE is a 1.2m robotic telescope, equipped with an Echelle spectrograph (HEROS), with a resolution R ≃ 20000. iSpec is a synthetic spectral fitting program for stars that allows to determine in an homogeneous way their fundamental parameters: effective temperature, Teff, surface gravity, log g, metallicities, [M/H] and [Fe/H], and rotational velocity, V sin i. In this first article we test our method by analysing the spectra of 46 stars, hosts of exoplanets, obtained with the TIGRE.