Speaker
Description
To detect unknown and potentially dangerous asteroids, ESA’s Planetary Defence Office prepares the operation of a network of so called FLYEYE telescopes.
ESA’s Test Bed Telescope (TBT) project is laying the groundwork for the efficient operation of these telescopes. The project consists of two identical telescopes: one located at ESA’s ground station in Cebreros, West of Madrid in Spain, and one at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) La Silla observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The TBT network is augmented by the 80-cm-Schmidt Telescope at the CAHA observatory in in the Sierra de Filabres, in the province of Almería, Spain.
The presentation gives an overview of the survey activities conducted with these telescopes and how they lead to the discovery of unknown objects. It is described how the observation are planned and implemented and how the resulting data are processed automatically.