Colloquium
ATLAS-Teide: IAC's robotic facility for planetary defense and transients
Abstract
I will present ATLAS-Teide, the new robotic facility of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), built and installed by the IAC at the Teide Observatory in mid-January 2025. ATLAS-Teide is part of the IACs Strategic Plan of the Canary Observatories, supported by projects EQC2021-007122-P and ICT2022-007828, both funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. The system operates within the global ATLAS network under a collaborative agreement between the IAC and the University of Hawaii, covering both operations and scientific exploitation.
ATLAS is one of the most successful planetary-defense early-warning projects. The network currently includes four 50-cm Wright–Schmidt telescopes in Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa. Each unit surveys roughly a quarter of the night sky, imaging each field four times per night to V ~ 19.5, and is designed to detect ~20 m impactors days in advance and ~100 m objects weeks ahead.
ATLAS-Teide is the fifth ATLAS unit and introduces a cost-effective, modular design based on commercial off-the-shelf components. Each module combines four Celestron RASA 11 telescopes on a PlaneWave L-550 direct-drive equatorial mount with QHY600PRO CMOS cameras sharing a common field. A single module delivers the performance of a 56-cm aperture with a 7.5 deg2 field of view and 1.26 arcsec/pixel scale. The full facility comprises four modules in a roll-off-roof building, replicating the survey capability of existing ATLAS units-covering ~6000 deg2 four times per night with 30-second exposures to V ≈ 20.2. ATLAS-Teide is already providing high-cadence observations, reporting astrometry for thousands of asteroids nightly, discovering new NEAs and transients (including supernovae). I will also present first scientific results from the facility.
About the talk
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC)
iCalendar I will present ATLAS-Teide, the new robotic facility of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), built and installed by the IAC at the Teide Observatory in mid-January 2025. ATLAS-Teide is part of the IACs Strategic Plan of the Canary Observatories, supported by projects EQC2021-007122-P and ICT2022-007828, both funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. The system operates within the global ATLAS network under a collaborative agreement between the IAC and the University of Hawaii, covering both operations and scientific exploitation.
ATLAS is one of the most successful planetary-defense early-warning projects. The network currently includes four 50-cm Wright–Schmidt telescopes in Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa. Each unit surveys roughly a quarter of the night sky, imaging each field four times per night to V ~ 19.5, and is designed to detect ~20 m impactors days in advance and ~100 m objects weeks ahead.
ATLAS-Teide is the fifth ATLAS unit and introduces a cost-effective, modular design based on commercial off-the-shelf components. Each module combines four Celestron RASA 11 telescopes on a PlaneWave L-550 direct-drive equatorial mount with QHY600PRO CMOS cameras sharing a common field. A single module delivers the performance of a 56-cm aperture with a 7.5 deg2 field of view and 1.26 arcsec/pixel scale. The full facility comprises four modules in a roll-off-roof building, replicating the survey capability of existing ATLAS units-covering ~6000 deg2 four times per night with 30-second exposures to V ≈ 20.2. ATLAS-Teide is already providing high-cadence observations, reporting astrometry for thousands of asteroids nightly, discovering new NEAs and transients (including supernovae). I will also present first scientific results from the facility.
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About the speaker
I will present ATLAS-Teide, the new robotic facility of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), built and installed by the IAC at the Teide Observatory in mid-January 2025. ATLAS-Teide is part of the IACs Strategic Plan of the Canary Observatories, supported by projects EQC2021-007122-P and ICT2022-007828, both funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. The system operates within the global ATLAS network under a collaborative agreement between the IAC and the University of Hawaii, covering both operations and scientific exploitation.
ATLAS is one of the most successful planetary-defense early-warning projects. The network currently includes four 50-cm Wright–Schmidt telescopes in Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa. Each unit surveys roughly a quarter of the night sky, imaging each field four times per night to V ~ 19.5, and is designed to detect ~20 m impactors days in advance and ~100 m objects weeks ahead.
ATLAS-Teide is the fifth ATLAS unit and introduces a cost-effective, modular design based on commercial off-the-shelf components. Each module combines four Celestron RASA 11 telescopes on a PlaneWave L-550 direct-drive equatorial mount with QHY600PRO CMOS cameras sharing a common field. A single module delivers the performance of a 56-cm aperture with a 7.5 deg2 field of view and 1.26 arcsec/pixel scale. The full facility comprises four modules in a roll-off-roof building, replicating the survey capability of existing ATLAS units-covering ~6000 deg2 four times per night with 30-second exposures to V ≈ 20.2. ATLAS-Teide is already providing high-cadence observations, reporting astrometry for thousands of asteroids nightly, discovering new NEAs and transients (including supernovae). I will also present first scientific results from the facility.