The Centurion 18 telescope of the Wise Observatory

TL;DR

The paper details the deployment and use of the Centurion 18 telescope at Wise Observatory, highlighting its capabilities, automation, and diverse scientific applications including asteroid, exoplanet, and AGN monitoring.

Contribution

It introduces a cost-effective, automated small telescope facility and demonstrates its successful application in various astronomical monitoring projects.

Findings

Automated operation from remote locations.

Versatile use in asteroid, exoplanet, and AGN studies.

Cost-effective setup with significant scientific output.

Abstract

We describe the second telescope of the Wise Observatory, a 0.46-m Centurion 18 (C18) installed in 2005, which enhances significantly the observing possibilities. The telescope operates from a small dome and is equipped with a large-format CCD camera. In the last two years this telescope was intensively used in a variety of monitoring projects. The operation of the C18 is now automatic, requiring only start-up at the beginning of a night and close-down at dawn. The observations are mostly performed remotely from the Tel Aviv campus or even from the observer's home. The entire facility was erected for a component cost of about 70k$ and a labor investment of a total of one man-year. We describe three types of projects undertaken with this new facility: the measurement of asteroid light variability with the purpose of determining physical parameters and binarity, the following-up of transiting extrasolar planets, and the study of AGN variability. The successful implementation of the C18 demonstrates the viability of small telescopes in an age of huge light-collectors, provided the operation of such facilities is very efficient.