The Centurion 18 telescope of the Wise Observatory

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.

16 pages, 13 figures, some figures quality was degraded, accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Science

References in corpus (20)

• Reverberation Measurements for 17 Quasars and the Size-Mass-Luminosity Relations in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Central Masses and Broad-Line Region Sizes of Active Galactic Nuclei. II. A Homogeneous Analysis of a Large Reverberation-Mapping Database
• Detection of Planetary Transits Across a Sun-like Star
• The WASP Project and the SuperWASP Cameras
• Planetary Radii across Five Orders of Magnitude in Mass and Stellar Insolation: Application to Transits
• On detecting terrestrial planets with timing of giant planet transits
• DHP Framework: Digital Health Passports Using Blockchain -- Use case on international tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Wide-field millimagnitude photometry with HAT: A Tool for Extra-solar Planet Detection
• The Interiors of Giant Planets: Models and Outstanding Questions
• A Neptune-Mass Planet Orbiting the Nearby M Dwarf GJ 436
• The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT): A Small Robotic Telescope for Large-Area Synoptic Surveys
• Measurement of Spin-Orbit Alignment in an Extrasolar Planetary System
• Active Galactic Nuclei with Candidate Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• The Spectroscopic Orbit of the Planetary Companion Transiting HD209458
• Detection of transits of the nearby hot Neptune GJ 436 b
• The ROTSE-III Robotic Telescope System
• The M Dwarf GJ 436 and its Neptune-Mass Planet
• The Transit Light Curve Project. III. Tres Transits of TrES-1
• Precise Radius Estimates for the Exoplanets WASP-1b and WASP-2b
• Outcome of Six Candidate Transiting Planets from a TrES Field in Andromeda

Cited by in corpus (33)

• The Transit Light Curve Project. IX. Evidence for a Smaller Radius of the Exoplanet XO-3b
• Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. III. Optical Continuum Emission and Broad-Band Time Delays in NGC 5548
• Reverberation Mapping of Optical Emission Lines in Five Active Galaxies
• Velocity-resolved reverberation mapping of five bright Seyfert 1 galaxies
• A tidally distorted dwarf galaxy near NGC 4449
• HAT-P-9b: A Low Density Planet Transiting a Moderately Faint F star
• Continuum Reverberation Mapping of the Accretion Disks in Two Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• Transiting exoplanets from the CoRoT space mission V. CoRoT-Exo-4b: Stellar and planetary parameters
• The Transit Light Curve Project. XII. Six Transits of the Exoplanet XO-2b
• A 2 km-size asteroid challenging the rubble-pile spin barrier - a case for cohesion
• The binary near-Earth asteroid (175706) 1996 FG3 - An observational constraint on its orbital evolution
• Observations of "Fresh" and Weathered Surfaces on Asteroid Pairs and Their Implications on the Rotational-Fission Mechanism
• The Halos and Environments of Nearby Galaxies (HERON) I: Imaging, Sample Characteristics, and Envelope Diameters
• Photometry and Spin Rate Distribution of Small-Sized Main Belt Asteroids
• UV/Optical disk reverberation lags despite a faint X-ray corona in the AGN Mrk 335
• Photometric Follow-up Observations of the Transiting Neptune-Mass Planet GJ 436b
• Spin Axes and Shape Models of Asteroid Pairs: Fingerprints of YORP and a Path to the Density of Rubble Piles
• Rotation Periods of Binary Asteroids with Large Separations - Confronting the Escaping Ejecta Binaries Model with Observations
• AGN STORM 2. VII. A Frequency-resolved Map of the Accretion Disk in Mrk 817: Simultaneous X-ray Reverberation and UVOIR Disk Reprocessing Time Lags
• X-ray/UVOIR Frequency-resolved Time Lag Analysis of Mrk 335 Reveals Accretion Disk Reprocessing
• Rotationally Resolved Spectroscopy of Asteroid Pairs: No Spectral Variation Suggests Fission is followed by Settling of Dust
• Automatized photometric monitoring of active galactic nuclei with the 46 cm telescope of the Wise observatory
• Continuum reverberation mapping of the quasar PG 2130+099
• Affordable echelle spectroscopy of the eccentric HAT-P-2, WASP-14 and XO-3 planetary systems with a sub-meter-class telescope
• Continuum reverberation mapping of MCG 08-11-011
• The Jay Baum Rich telescope: a Centurion 28 at the Wise Observatory
• Observational Investigation of the 2013 Near-Earth Encounter by Asteroid (367943) Duende
• An Optical-UV-IR Survey of the North Celestial Cap: I. The Catalogue
• Simultaneous Spectroscopic and Photometric Observations of Binary Asteroids
• AGN STORM 2: I. First results: A Change in the Weather of Mrk 817
• Surface slopes of asteroid pairs as indicators of mechanical properties and cohesion
• Another look at the size of the low-surface brightness galaxy VCC 1661 in the Virgo Cluster
• The Great Slump: Mrk926 reveals discrete and varying Balmer line satellite components during a drastic phase of decline