The HATSouth Project
HATSouth is a collaboration among the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, the Princeton University, the Australian National University, and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. It consists of a network of six identical, fully automated wide field telescopes, located at three sites (Chile: Las Campanas, Australia: Siding Springs, and Namibia: HESS site) in the Southern hemisphere. Each of the three sites operates two HATS units, for increased sky coverage and redundancy in case of failure. Each unit is composed of a suite of four 0.18m f/2.8 Takahashi hyperbolic astrographs, each incorporating an Apogee 4K×4K CCD detector with Sloan r filter, and each spanning a 4°×4° field of view. This means that every HATS instrument has a mosaic field of view of 8°×8°, so each site monitors 128 square degrees of sky. The primary purpose of the project is to detect and characterize a large number of extrasolar planets transiting nearby bright stars. The three sites permit near round-the-clock monitoring of selected fields, and the continuous data-stream greatly enhances recovery of planetary transits.
Photo credit: Luigi Mancini
Review papers of the project
HATSouth: a global network of fully automated and identical wide-field telescopes
G. Á. Bakos, Z. Csubry, K. Penev, D. Bayliss, A. Jordan, C. Afonso, J. D. Hartman, T. Henning, G. Kovacs, R. W. Noyes, B. Béky, V. Suc, B. Csak, M. Rabus, J. Lazar, I. Papp, P. Sari, P. Conroy, G. Zhou, P. D. Sackett, B. Schmidt, L. Mancini, D. D. Sasselov, K. Ueltzhoeffer
HAT-South: a global network of southern hemisphere automated telescopes to detect transiting exoplanets
by G. Bakos et al.
Conference Proceedings of the IAU Symposium #253 (2008) Link
Extrasolar Planets discovered so far
HATS-1b: a hot jupiter discovered by the HATSouth transit survey
K. Penev, G. A. Bakos, D. Bayliss,
A. Jordàn, M. Mohler, G. Zhou, V. Suc, M. Rabus, J.
L. Mancini, B. Béky, Z. Csubry, L. Buchhave, T. Henning, N.
Nikolov, B. Csàk, R. Brahm, N. Espinoza, P. Conroy,
R. W. Noyes, D. D. Sasselov, B. Schmidt, D. J.
Wright, C. G. Tinney, B. C. Addison, J. Làzàr, I.
Papp, P. Sàri
HATS-2b: a transiting extrasolar planet orbiting a K-type star showing starspot activity
L. Mancini, J. D. Hartman, G. A. Bakos, K. Penev, D. Bayliss, A.
Jordan, Z. Csubry, G. Zhou, M. Rabus, N. Nikolov, R.
Brahm, N. Espinoza, L. A. Buchhave, B. Beky, V. Suc,
B. Csak, T. Henning, D. J. Wright, C. G. Tinney, B.
C. Addison, B. Schmidt, R. W. Noyes, I. Papp, J.
Lazar, P. Sari, and P. Conroy
HATS-3b: An inflated hot Jupiter transiting an
HATS-4b: a dense hot-Jupiter
transiting a super metal-rich G star
HATS-5b: a transiting
hot-Saturn from the HATSouth Survey
HATS-6b: a warm Saturn
transiting an early M dwarf star, and a set of
empirical relations for characterizing K and M dwarf
HATS-7b: a hot super Neptune transiting a quiet K dwarf star
G. A. Bakos, K. Penev, D. Bayliss, J. D. Hartman, G. Zhou, R. Brahm, L. Mancini, M. de Val-Borro, W. Bhatti, A. Jordan, M. Rabus, N. Espinoza, Z. Csubry, A. W. Howard, B. J. Fulton, L. A. Buchhave, S. Ciceri, T. Henning, B. Schmidt, H. Isaacson, R. W. Noyes, G. W. Marcy, V. Suc, A. R. Howe, A. S. Burrows, J. Lazar, I. Papp, P. Sari12
Submitted to The Astronomical Journal, 2015
HATS-8b: a low-density transiting super-Neptune
D. Bayliss, J. D. Hartman, G. A. Bakos, K. Penev, G. Zhou, R. Brahm, M. Rabus, A. Jordan, L. Mancini, M. de Val-Borro, W. Bhatti, N. Espinoza, Z. Csubry, A. W. Howard, B. J. Fulton, L. A. Buchhave, T. Henning, B. Schmidt, S. Ciceri, R. W. Noyes, H. Isaacson, G. W. Marcy, V. Suc, J. Lazar, I. Papp, P. Sari
To appear in The Astronomical Journal, 2015
HATS-9b and HATS-10b: two compact hot jupiters in field 7 of the K2 mission
R. Brahm, A. Jordan, J. D. Hartman, G. A. Bakos, D. Bayliss, K. Penev, G. Zhou, S. Ciceri, M. Rabus, N. Espinoza, L. Mancini, M. de Val-Borro, W. Bhatti, B. Sato, T. G. Tan, Z. Csubry, L. Buchhave, T. Henning, B. Schmidt, V. Suc, R. W. Noyes, I. Papp, J. Lazar, P. Sari
The Astronomical Journal 150, 33 (13 pp.), 2015
HATS-13b and HATS-14b: two transiting hot Jupiters from the HATSouth survey
L. Mancini, J. D. Hartman, K. Penev, G. A. Bakos, R. Brahm, S. Ciceri, Th. Henning, Z. Csubry, D. Bayliss, G. Zhou, M. Rabus, M. de Val-Borro, N. Espinoza, A. Jordan, V. Suc, W. Bhatti, B. Schmidt, B. Sato, T. G. Tan, D. J. Wright, C. G. Tinney, B. C. Addison, R. W. Noyes, J. Lazar, I. Papp, P. Sari
Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2015
Operation at HESS Site
Two of the HAT-South telescopes are located in the HESS site, which is located in Khomas Highland of Namibia, on the Farm Goellschau, about 100 km south-west of Windhoek, Namibias capital.
Google Map of the HESS site
The exact location is:
23° 16' 10.17'' S
16° 30' 10.17'' E
|A 24 hour video clip of the telescopes on October 10, 2011|
Editor of this page: Luigi Mancini