MONET/North: a very fast 1.2m robotic telescope

Bischoff, K.; Tuparev, Georg; Hessman, F. V.; Nikolova, Irina

doi:10.1117/12.671433

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Our photometric monitoring of the system with SPECULOOS [20] and the MONET/South telescope [31] partially covered four eclipse epochs, and have so far failed to recover a second eclipse, a constraint that is included in our orbit fit. We used all of the photometric data to search for evidence of rotationally-modulated variability.…”

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confidence: 99%

An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

et al. 2020

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corresponding authors Mass, radius, and age are three of the most fundamental parameters for celestial objects, enabling studies of the evolution and internal physics of stars, brown dwarfs, and planets. Brown dwarfs are hydrogen-rich objects that are unable to sustain core fusion reactions but are supported from collapse by electron degeneracy pressure [1]. As they age, brown dwarfs cool, reducing their radius and luminosity. Young exoplanets follow a similar behaviour. Brown dwarf evolutionary models are relied upon to infer the masses, radii and ages of these objects [2, 3]. Similar models are used to infer the mass and radius of directly imaged exoplanets [4]. Unfortunately, only sparse empirical mass, radius and age measurements are currently available, and the models remain mostly unvalidated. Double-line eclipsing binaries provide the most direct route for the absolute determination of the masses and radii of stars [5, 6, 7]. Here, we report the SPECULOOS discovery of 2M1510A, a nearby, eclipsing, double-line brown dwarf binary, with a widely-separated tertiary brown dwarf companion. We also find that the system is a member of the 45±5 Myr-old moving group, Argus [8, 9]. The system's age matches those of currently known directly-imaged exoplanets. 2M1510A provides an opportunity to benchmark evolutionary models of brown dwarfs and young planets. We find that widely-used evolutionary models [4] do reproduce the mass, radius and age of the binary components remarkably well, but overestimate the luminosity by up to 0.65 magnitudes, which could result in underestimated photometric masses for directly-imaged exoplanets and young field brown dwarfs by 20 to 35%.

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confidence: 99%

An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

et al. 2020

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“…A total of 60 eclipses of V808 Aur were observed in white light between 2009 and 2014 with the 1.2 m MONET/N telescope located at the McDonald Observatory/Texas (Bischoff et al 2006). An additional nine eclipses were acquired with the 80 cm Schmidt telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory/Spain, the 2 m Faulkes/N, the 1 m telescopes of the Las Cumbres Observatories at the sites on Hawaii, Teide/Teneriffa, and McDonald Observatory (this set of data referred to as "MONET/N+").…”

Section: Monet/north Calar Alto and Las Cumbres Observatorymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Eccentric Planet Orbiting the Polar V808 Aurigae

Leichty,

Garnavich,

Littlefield

et al. 2024

ApJ

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We analyze 15 yr of eclipse timings of the polar V808 Aur. The rapid ingress/egress of the white dwarf and bright accretion region provide timings as precise as a few tenths of a second for rapid cadence photometric data. We find that between 2015 and 2018, the eclipse timings deviated from a linear ephemeris by more than 30 s. The rapid timing change is consistent with the periastron passage of a planet in an eccentric orbit about the polar. The best-fit orbital period is 11 ± 1 yr and we estimate a projected mass of M sin ( i ) = 6.8 ± 0.7 Jupiter masses. We also show that the eclipse timings are correlated with the brightness of the polar with a slope of 1.1 s mag−1. This is likely due to the change in the geometry of the accretion curtains as a function of the mass transfer rate in the polar. While an eccentric planet offers an excellent explanation to the available eclipse data for V808 Aur, proposed planetary systems in other eclipsing polars have often struggled to accurately predict future eclipse timings.

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“…The two MONET Alt/Az telescopes (Hessman, 2001;Bischoff et al, 2006) have (almost) identical hardware with a 1.2 m main mirror at f/ 7. They were optimized for fast operations with up to 10 °/s on both axes and therefore also have a clam-shell roof that opens completely.…”

Section: Monet/nmentioning

confidence: 99%

pyobs - An Observatory Control System for Robotic Telescopes

Husser

Hessman

Martens

et al. 2022

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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We present a Python-based framework for the complete operation of a robotic telescope observatory. It provides out-of-the-box support for many popular camera types while other hardware like telescopes, domes, and weather stations can easily be added via a thin abstraction layer to existing code. Common functionality like focusing, acquisition, auto-guiding, sky-flat acquisition, and pipeline calibration are ready for use. A remote-control interface, a “mastermind” for truly robotic operations as well as an interface to the Las Cumbres Observatory observation portal is included. The whole system is fully configurable and easily extendable. We are currently running pyobs successfully on three different types of telescopes, of which one is a siderostat for observing the Sun. pyobs uses open standards and open software wherever possible and is itself freely available.

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MONET/North: a very fast 1.2m robotic telescope

Cited by 11 publications

References 1 publication

An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

An Eccentric Planet Orbiting the Polar V808 Aurigae

pyobs - An Observatory Control System for Robotic Telescopes

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