COSMOGRAIL

COSMOGRAIL : Monitoring Telescopes

Progress in astronomy often derives from progress in technology to analyse fainter and more distant sources, i.e. progress in the design of larger telescopes and better detectors. Thanks to important new developments it is now possible to construct a new generation of large telescopes to probe the deep universe. But this huge technological step forwards can also benefit to smaller telescopes: a modern telescope equipped with state-of-the-art detectors can now perform research that 20 years ago could only be done with the largest telescopes. The advantage of a smaller telescope simply is that it can be run on a smaller scale, and so be dedicated to a limited amount of well targeted projects that require much observing time. This advantage is most obvious for projects of monitoring of variable sources, which require a fairly continuous availability of the telescope.

The COSMOGRAIL monitoring currently involves five medium-size telescopes:
(1) the Swiss 1.2-m Euler Telescope located at La Silla, Chile,
(2) the Belgian-Swiss 1.2-m Mercator Telescope, located in the Canary Islands, La Palma, Spain,
(3) the 2-m Robotic Telescope of the Liverpool University, UK, also located at La Palma,
(4) the 1.5-m telescope of Maidanak Observatory, Uzbekistan, and
(5) the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT), located at Hanle, India.

	Euler Telescope Euler is a 1.2-metre telescope operated by the Geneva Observatory, Université de Genève (Switzerland) and located at La Silla Observatory, Chile (29°15' S 70°44' W, 2400m altitude). Observing time is mainly shared between extrasolar planet search with the Coralie spectrometer and photometry with the CCD camera, focusing on variables stars, asteroseismology, follow-up of gamma-ray bursters (GRB), monitoring of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and of course gravitational lenses.
	Mercator Telescope Mercator is a 1.2-metre telescope operated by the Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain (28°46' N 17°53' W, 2330m altitude). It is the twin brother of Euler Telescope. Efforts are coordinated on a certain amount of projects, where regular observations of variable sources are needed, including asteroseismology, high-energy astrophysics (monitoring of gamma-ray bursters, X-ray transients, supernovae), active galactic nuclei and gravitational lenses.
	Liverpool Telescope Liverpool Robotic Telescope (LRT) is a 2.0-metre fully robotic telescope at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos, La Palma (Spain), designed and built by Telescope Technologies Ltd, owned and operated by the Astrophysics Research Institute of Liverpool JMU. This robotic telescope allows to properly undertake scientific programmes that require long-term monitoring of variable objects (novae, extra-galactic SN, quasars) as well as rapid reaction to unpredictable phenomena and their systematic follow up (GRB, near-Earth asteroids, long period comets).
	Maidanak Telescope The 1.5-metre telescope of Maidanak Observatory is located at the south-east of the Republic of Uzbekistan (38°41' N 66°56' E). It lies on the spurs of the Pamir Alai mountain system at 2000m above sea level.
	Himalayan Chandra Telescope The HCT is a 2-m optical-infrared telescope installed at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle (32°47' N 78°58' E), at an altitude of 4500 metres to the north of Western Himalayas. The telescope is remotely operated from CREST, Hosakote, via a dedicated satellite link.