10/06/16: SO/NOAO Joint Colloquium Series: Rachel Street, LCOGT
Title: Exoplanets in the 4th Dimension - lessons learned from time domain follow-up
Abstract:
Since 2007, LCOGT has been discovering and characterizing cool exoplanets through the technique of microlensing, though the full worldwide network of telescopes only became fully operational in 2014. The Microlensing Key Project has come to be regarded as the most technically demanding owing to its highly real-time nature. Surveys feed alerts of ongoing microlensing events in real-time but only ~5% ever display the brief signature of a planet, so the follow-up program has to be extremely flexible and responsive. This mode of operation is likely to become more widespread over the next 15 years, as alerts from LSST serve a wide range of science goals. In this context, is it informative to review the challenges experienced by programs like the Microlensing Key Project, the pros and cons of current solutions and consider the potential of harnessing new technologies for time domain astronomy.
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