Installation of the new detector unit in Spain

In October 2010 the first unit of the new "Pi of the Sky" detector system was successfully installed in the INTA El Arenosillo test centre in Mazagón near Huelva, Spain, at the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The robotic telescope consisting of 4 CCD cameras on one parallactic mount was installed in the telescope dome of the BOOTES experiment from IAA. Custom-design cameras with STA0820 2Kx2K CCD chips are the improved version of the cameras developed for the prototype system in Chile operational since 2004 in Las Campanas Observatory. Equiped with EF CANON lenses with the focal length f = 85 mm (f/d = 1.2) the set of four cameras can monitor about 0.5 steradian of the sky (40x40 degrees) with 10 s time resolution. The device is fully autonomous, designed to work without human supervision. With control solutions based on ethernet and industrial CAN standard new design of the telescope mount provides much better pointing accuracy and shorter reaction time than the prototype.

The main goal of the "Pi of the Sky" experiment is to detect optical counterparts of GRBs at the very beginning and during the gamma emission or even before it. The observation strategy is based on the continuous monitoring of the large part of the sky with high temporal resolution and the fast image processing algorithms, allowing for optical transient recognition in real time. The full system will consist of 2 sites separated by a distance of the order 100 km, each site consisting of 12 custom-designed survey CCD cameras. Pairs of cameras from two sites will work in coincidence and observe the same field of view to allow rejection of false signals coming from near-earth objects. The whole system will be capable of continuous observation of about 1.5 steradian of the sky, which roughly corresponds to the field monitored by the Swift satellite. The installation of the whole system will continue in 2011.

We are very grateful for the hospitality and support we received from the BOOTES group from IAA, Granada, and from the INTA management and staff.

Some pictures from the new site (click to enlarge):


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Where we are (green arrow)The North landscape

The open dome and camerasThe cameras close up

Our second site in northern Chile