AAVSOnet: the Robotic Telescope Network (Poster abstract)

Volume 40 number 1 (2012)

Mike Simonsen

AAVSO Headquarters, 49 Bay State Road, Cambridge, MA 02138; mikesimonsen@aavso.org

Abstract

(Abstract only) AAVSOnet is the growing network of robotic telescopes owned and operated by the American Association of Variable Star Observers. With telescopes ranging from 60-mm to 0.61-m in aperture located around the globe, the network fulfills a multitude of science goals. The largest telescopes will be fitted with instruments capable of doing both spectroscopy and photometry. We have pairs of 20-cm telescopes in Chile and New Mexico conducting an all-sky photometric survey (APASS) from 10th to 17th magnitude. These pairs of telescopes monitor the sky in two filters simultaneously in Johnson B and V, as well as Sloan g, r, i, and z. There are telescopes in the 25–35-cm range available to conduct automated programs of stars selected by AAVSO members, and five small telescopes monitoring poorly studied stars brighter than 10th magnitude in both the southern and northern hemispheres. All the data for every star on every image are archived at AAVSO headquarters for future data-mining; images are uploaded to member accounts where they can be analyzed by a powerful suite of photometric tools and observations submitted to the AAVSO International Database.