HATNet Project

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hungarian Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) project is a network of six small fully-automated "HAT" telescopes. The scientific goal of the project is to detect and characterize extrasolar planets, and also to find and follow bright variable stars. The network is maintained by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The HAT acronym stands for Hungarian-made Automated Telescope, because it was developed by a small group of Hungarians who met through the Hungarian Astronomical Association. The project started in 1999 and has been fully operational since 2001 May.

1 Equipment
2 Participants in the project
3 Planets discovered by HATNet
4 The future of small telescopes
5 External links

[edit] Equipment

The telescopes quite small (11 cm diameter), wide-field (8x8deg), fully-automated instruments with 2K x 2K CCD sensors.

The prototype instrument, HAT-1 was built from a 180 mm focal length and 65 mm aperture Nikon telephoto lens and a Kodak KAF-0401E chip of 512 × 768, 9 μm pixels. The test period was in 2000-2001 in Budapest, Konkoly Observatory.

HAT-1 was transported Budapest to Steward Observatory, Kitt Peak, Arizona, in 2001 January. (The transportation caused serious damage to the equipment, see the details at Chicago Journals. More technical descriptions are also available at this link.)

Later built telescopes use Canon 11 cm diameter f/1.8L lenses and 2K x 2 K CCD sensors.

HAT is controlled by a single Linux PC without human supervision. Data are stored in a MySQL database.

[edit] Participants in the project

HAT-1 was developed during the undergraduate (and also the first year graduate) studies of Gáspár Bakos (Eötvös Lóránd University) and at Konkoly Observatory (Budapest), under the supervision of Dr. Géza Kovács. In the development József Lázár, István Papp and Pál Sári also played an important role.

[edit] Planets discovered by HATNet

[edit] The future of small telescopes

Todays those people who are interested about science, and especially in astronomy, find a lot of interesting articles that describes the achievements of e.g. the Hubble or Keck telescopes. What is then possible to do with such small (11 cm diameter!) equipment?

The answer is quite easy. The huge, extremely expensive telescopes are used for specific scientific research. These instruments are almost never used for such daily - tasks tasks just like observing variable stars. In fact, most of the data about variable star light - curves come from hobby astronomers (a part of them work with the naked eye and despite this, they make quite reliable and accurate observations!). The data gathered up by amateurs are quite important. But in this case, a group of well - trained astronomers use their small, but all time available (let's say, all nights available) fully automated equipment. They fill a gap that exists between the large, expensive professional equipment and the amateur possibilities. The fully automated telescope systems make them able to save data even when they are not personally present. And a several-year long uniterrupted light-curve diagram was seldom available about any variable stars or any celestial objects, at least, until this project has started. And the discovery of the seven (until May, 2008) extrasolar planets) also validate their efforts.