USNO Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) phase 1

Details USNO Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) phase 1 USNO Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) phase 1

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21347011z&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #470.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.421

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) will begin a new all-sky, astrometric survey in 2009. A new focal plane assembly has been funded in 2008 and is being built by Semiconductor Technology Associates (STA). It consists of 4 large CCDs (10.5k by 10.5k) and 4 smaller guide/focus chips mounted inside an LN2 dewar (G.Luppino) with the 300 mm clear aperture window serving also as filter for the 670 to 750 nm bandpass.
Phase 2 of this project requires a new 0.85m aperture telescope of which only the primary mirror has been delivered so far. The first phase of the USNO Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) project, nicknamed "U-mouse", instead utilizes the existing, completely re-modeled USNO "redlens" astrograph to provide 28 square degrees sky coverage per single exposure with 0.905 arcsec/pixel resolution.
Test observing with the robotic telescope and a single 10k CCD will begin in January 2009 in Washington DC and delivery of the 4-shooter camera is expected in April 2009. Survey operations will be conducted from NOFS (northern) and
CTIO (southern hemisphere).
About 15-30 sky overlaps will be obtained from each site during 2 to 3 years of imaging to arrive at a catalog of positions, proper motions and parallaxes for stars in the R = 7 to 18 mag range with random errors of about 3 mas per coordinate for the 11 to 15 mag range, and systematic errors expected to be below 10 mas. Clocked anti-blooming is used to extend the dynamic range about 3 magnitudes beyond traditional saturation. A neutral density spot allows observations of naked eye stars.

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