The MAST control software: coordinating a 20-telescope array as a single schedule facility

Le résumé fourni par la source

The Multi-Aperture Spectroscopic Telescope (MAST) is an array of commercial telescopes that aims to solve the gap between the yield of large field-of-view photometric surveys and the availability of efficient spectroscopic follow-up facilities. MAST is designed to be a cost-effective facility, with a price tag an order of magnitude lower than an equivalent-size single-aperture telescope facility. It is comprised of twenty 24inF/3 parabolic mirror prime focus telescopes that simultaneously feed a single spectrograph at a time using a dedicated fiber optics run. The array can be operated flexibly, either multiplexing bright targets or observing the same faint target with multiple telescopes for a total light-collecting area equivalent to a ~2.7m telescope. The MAST array can be easily replicated to various locations around the globe and will enhance our capability to follow up transients, study samples of stellar populations at high cadence, and perform unique experiments, such as efficient intensity interferometry measurements of bright sources.

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