ATLAS Telescope at Teide Observatory

In force date
Call year
2021
Investigator
Javier Andrés
Licandro Goldaracena
Amount granted to the IAC Consortium
839.000,00 €
Description

This action aims to acquire the hardware and build an ATLAS unit at the Teide Observatory (OT) in order to integrate the OT and the IAC Solar System group in one of the most important surveys of NEOs. ATLAS is an early detection system for objects that can collide with the Earth, composed of a network of 50cm telescopes, at f / D = 2 and a wide field (30 degrees^2). It has 2 telescopes in Hawaii, and another 2 under construction in South Africa and Chile. Each one makes a mapping of ¿ of the night sky making 4 observations of each field, managing to detect moving objects of V = 20. ATLAS is a key tool in the Planetary Defense strategy. It is also a unique source of astrometric and photometric data for the population of small bodies in the solar system.

ATLAS also offers a unique possibility of obtaining information with a wide time base of different types of celestial objects that present variability (variable stars, AGNs, GRBs, optical counterparts of gravitational wave sources, etc.) and of artificial satellites and space debris. This project will open access for the Spanish community to all ATLAS data, present and historical, including raw, processed and stacked images to obtain deep images of the entire sky, as well as other products obtained with the data by the project. 

State of being in force
Level
Type of funding
State
AEI
MICIU_Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia
UE_NextGenerationEU. Plan de Recuperación