The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) is a three robotic telescope project to detect stellar occultation events generated by TNOs. TAOS II aims to monitor about 10000 stars simultaneously at 20Hz to generate a significant event rate. The TAOS II cameras are designed to cover the 1.7 degree diameter field of view of the 1.3m telescopes with a mosaic of ten 4.5k × 2k e2v CIS 113 CMOS sensors. The CIS 113 has a back-illuminated thinned structure to provide similar performance to that of back-thinned CCDs. The CIS 113 device has 16 micron pixels with 8 outputs, with a plate scale about 0.63”/pixel. With the freedom of direct row and column addressing, star boxes with sizes of 8 × 8 pixels in each sensor can be sampled at 20 Hz or higher with a pixel rate of 1M pixel/sec per channel. The sensors, mounted on a single Invar plate, are cooled to an operating temperature of about 200K by a cryogenic cooler. The gap between two sensors is about 0.5mm. The control electronics consist of an analog part and a Xilinx FPGA based digital circuit. One FPGA is needed to control and process the signal from each CIS 113 chip. Two large PCBs were used to fanout signals from the 10 CMOS devices through the vacuum chamber wall. A synchronization circuit receives a pulse from the control building to ensure the timing error of exposures of the three cameras is within 1 ms. The cameras were delivered and installed on the TAOS telescopes in 2023 and series of tests and adjustments have been carried out to optimize the performance. In this presentation, the camera performance in the full frame mode and the window mode will be detailed. The synchronization and the adjustment among the three cameras will also be presented.
The Observatorio Astron´omico Nacional on the Sierra San Pedro M´artir (OAN-SPM) in Baja California, Mexico is currently undergoing a substantial expansion in its observational infrastructure. The OAN-SPM’s three principal telescopes were installed in the 1970s. In 2015, the BOOTES-5 telescope was installed and is now operational (partners: Mexico, Spain, South Korea). In 2011 the construction of the TAOS-II project begun and its three telescopes are now in commissioning (partners: Taiwan, Mexico, USA, Canada). Also undergoing commissioning are the COATLI and DDOTI projects (both: Mexico, USA). Two projects, COLIBR´I and SAINT-EX are about to begin construction (COLIBR´I: Mexico, France; SAINT-EX: Switzerland, Mexico, UK). Finally, the Telescopio San Pedro M´artir project is advancing through its design phase (partners: Mexico, USA). All save the TSPM are fully funded, so the OAN-SPM will host 11-12 telescopes by the 2020’s, ranging in size from 28cm to 6.5m.
The Telescopio San Pedro Martir project intends to construct a 6.5m telescope to be installed at the Observatorio Astron´omico Nacional in the Sierra San Pedro M´artir in northern Baja California, Mexico. The project is an association of Mexican institutions, lead by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofısica, Optica y Electronica and UNAM’s Instituto de Astronomia, in partnership with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. The project is advancing through the design stage, having completed five design reviews of different subsystems in 2016 and 2017 (enclosure and services: PDR, CDR; optical design: PDR; optics: progress review; telescope: PDR). Once completed, the partners plan to operate the MMT and TSPM as a binational astrophysical observatory.
The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small (~1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (< 10−3 events per star per year) and short in duration (~200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence in order to detect events. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional at San Pedro Martir in Baja California, Mexico. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz. Construction of the site began in the fall of 2013, and the survey will begin by the end of 2018. This paper describes the observing system and provides an update on the status of the survey infrastructure.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Stars, Space telescopes, Signal to noise ratio, Diffraction, Cameras, Scanning probe microscopy, Design for manufacturing, Astronomy, Sensors
The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small (~1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (< 10−3 events per star per year) and short in duration (~200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, México. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz. Construction of the site began in the fall of 2013, and the survey will begin in the summer of 2017.
The Telescopio San Pedro Mártir project intends to construct a 6.5m telescope to be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir in northern Baja California, Mexico. The project is an association of Mexican institutions, lead by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica and the Instituto de Astronomía at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in partnership with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. The project is currently in the planning and design stage. Once completed, the partners plan to operate the MMT and TSPM as a binational astrophysical observatory.
DDOTI will be a wide-field robotic imager consisting of six 28-cm telescopes with prime focus CCDs mounted on a common equatorial mount. Each telescope will have a field of view of 12 deg2, will have 2 arcsec pixels, and will reach a 10σ limiting magnitude in 60 seconds of r ≈ 18:7 in dark time and r ≈ 18:0 in bright time. The set of six will provide an instantaneous field of view of about 72 deg2. DDOTI uses commercial components almost entirely. The first DDOTI will be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Martír, Baja California, México in early 2017. The main science goals of DDOTI are the localization of the optical transients associated with GRBs detected by the GBM instrument on the Fermi satellite and with gravitational-wave transients. DDOTI will also be used for studies of AGN and YSO variability and to determine the occurrence of hot Jupiters. The principal advantage of DDOTI compared to other similar projects is cost: a single DDOTI installation costs only about US$500,000. This makes it possible to contemplate a global network of DDOTI installations. Such geographic diversity would give earlier access and a higher localization rate. We are actively exploring this option.
The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small (~1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (< 10-3 events per star per year) and short in duration (~200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, México. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz. Construction of the site began in the fall of 2013.
The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small ( 1 km diameter) objects in the Solar System and beyond. Such events are very rare (< 10−3 events per star per year) and short in duration ( 200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astron´omico Nacional at San Pedro Martir in Baja California, Mexico. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz.
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