KMTNET: A NETWORK OF 1.6 M WIDE-FIELD OPTICAL TELESCOPES INSTALLED AT THREE SOUTHERN OBSERVATORIES

By Seung-Lee Kim, Chung-Uk Lee, Byeong-Gon Park, Dong Jin Kim, S. Cha, Yongseok Lee, C. Han, M. Chun, I. Yuk. 2016

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) is a wide-field photometric system installed by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). Here, we present the overall technical specifications of the KMTNet observation system, test observation results, data transfer and image processing procedure, and finally, the KMTNet science programs. The system consists of three 1.6 m wide-field optical telescopes equipped with mosaic CCD cameras of 18k by 18k pixels. Each telescope provides a 2.0 by 2.0 square degree field of view. We have finished installing all three telescopes and cameras sequentially at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in South Africa, and the Siding Spring Observatory (SSO) in Australia. This network of telescopes, which is spread over three different continents at a similar latitude of about -30 degrees, enables 24-hour continuous monitoring of targets observable in the Southern Hemisphere. The test observations showed good image quality that meets the seeing requirement of less than 1.0 arcsec in I-band. All of the observation data are transferred to the KMTNet data center at KASI via the international network communication and are processed with the KMTNet data pipeline. The primary scientific goal of the KMTNet is to discover numerous extrasolar planets toward the Galactic bulge by using the gravitational microlensing technique, especially earth-mass planets in the habitable zone. During the non-bulge season, the system is used for wide-field photometric survey science on supernovae, asteroids, and external galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c7bdbdaf0e3fd69ccd821d3e92ba299380cd5a1c

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Gal-yam
2. J. Sollerman
3. Lin Yan
4. Eran Ofek
5. S. Cenko
6. F. Taddia
7. B. Metzger
8. E. Berger

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. J. Sollerman
2. Shrinivas R. Kulkarni
3. Mario Juric
4. Eran Ofek
5. F. Taddia
6. L. Rauch

In Instrumentation

1. J. Surace
2. S. Cenko
3. Vandana Desai
4. A. Gal-yam
5. J. Sollerman
6. S. Adams
7. G. Helou
8. Shrinivas R. Kulkarni

Citations in the corpus

• The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results (2018, background): “…et al. 2014), the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS; Tonry et al. 2018), the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet; Kim et al. 2016), the Dark Energy Survey (Dark Energy Survey Collaboration 2005; Dark Energy Survey Collaboration et al. 2016) and other surveys…”
• Predictions of the WFIRST Microlensing Survey. I. Bound Planet Detection Rates (2018, background): “The OGLE (Udalski et al. 2015a), MOA (Sako et al. 2007) and three KMTNet telescopes (Kim et al. 2016) span the southern hemisphere and provide continuous high-cadence microlensing observations over tens of square degrees every night that weather allows.”