The Evryscope: the first full-sky gigapixel-scale telescope
Abstract
Current time-domain wide-field sky surveys generally operate with few-degree-sized fields and take many individual images to cover large sky areas each night. We present the design and project status of the Evryscope ("wide-seer"), which takes a different approach: using an array of small telescopes to form a single wide-field-of-view pointed at every part of the accessible sky simultaneously and continuously. The Evryscope is a gigapixel-scale imager with a 10,000 sq. deg. field of view and has 10% of the etendue of LSST. Each 2-minute exposure will reach V=16.4; 3-mmag-level scinitillation-limited photometry will be obtained on bright stars every 15 minutes. Each year the Evryscope will generate 70,000+ photometric datapoints on tens of millions of stars. The system will search for transiting exoplanets around bright stars, M-dwarfs and white dwarfs, as well as detecting microlensing events, nearby supernovae, and gamma-ray burst afterglows. All data will be recorded long-term, allowing post-facto follow-up of interesting events. The Evryscope is currently under construction and is planned for deployment in 2015. We present the current project status, including an update on the Evryscope prototype telescopes we have been operating for the last three years in the Canadian High Arctic.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #225
- Pub Date:
- January 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015AAS...22520207L