Chen Zhang, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Science and Technology of China; YD Ping, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Science and Technology of China; CY Zhao, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Science and Technology of China
Keywords: Wide field survey, telescope system, survey strategy
Abstract:
Space situational awareness is a kind of observation resource dependent task, it relies on the coverage of time, sky field and observation depth. To maximize the detecting efficiency, a flexible survey scheme is introduced. With the combination of general survey and specific survey, objects of different types can be considered. Also, the whole system is benefit by a data center which is dealing with all the quest management, data reduction and observation feedback. Based on the scheme, the first system CHES (CHanging Event Survey) has been built last year. It consists of a dozen of 280mm refractors which cover 600 sq. deg. in total, two 800mm prime focus reflectors which cover 8 sq. deg. in total. This system will survey the local visible sky every minute down to 10th mag, every 30 minutes down to 16th mag, and specific orbit belt down to 19th mag such as GEO. The large telescopes also responsible for the follow ups of events of interest to meet the problem of short tracklet, relative low precision and low SNR in large field survey. All the scheduling work is done with a data center dynamically, which includes user interface, observation feedback and response strategy system, so the telescope can run flexible and unattended, and the observation network can be extended easily. CHES and the data center will be fully operational late this year, and other off-site survey systems are in preparation. The current survey strategy and corresponding reduction method are carefully designed and tested in the routing observation.
Date of Conference: September 11-14, 2018
Track: Optical Systems Instrumentation