Speaker
Description
In this work, we present the first results of the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) unit that will be installed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) at Teide Observatory (TO) on Tenerife Island, Spain, in January 2025. The ATLAS-Teide unit will operate as part of the ATLAS network (https://atlas.fallingstar.com/) under an agreement between the IAC and the ATLAS team at the University of Hawaii, encompassing both operational and scientific exploitation.
ATLAS, developed by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA, is an asteroid impact early warning system consisting of four telescopes (two in Hawaii, one in Chile, and one in South Africa). Each ATLAS unit surveys a quarter of the night sky, making four observations of each field at hourly intervals, and is capable of detecting asteroids with a brightness of V=19.5 mag. This system aims to identify small (~20 m) asteroids on impact trajectories several days in advance and larger (~100 m) asteroids weeks prior to impact. The current ATLAS configuration uses 50 cm Wright-Schmidt telescopes paired with CCD cameras that image a 30 deg^2 field of view in a single exposure.
ATLAS-Teide introduces a novel and more cost-effective modular design, employing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. Each module consists of four Celestron RASA 11 telescopes mounted on an equatorial Direct Drive mount PlaneWave L550, with QHY600PRO CMOS cameras capturing a shared field of view. Each module achieves an effective aperture equivalent to a 56 cm telescope, with a 7.5 deg^2 field of view and a plate scale of 1.25"/pixel. A prototype module, ATLAS-P, was installed in November 2022 at an existing clamshell facility at TO to test the system's capabilities and develop the necessary control and image processing software.
ATLAS-P saw its first light on November 14, 2022, and during its commissioning phase demonstrated compliance with all mechanical, electrical, and optical requirements. Frames combining 5×6-second exposures simultaneously captured by the four telescopes consistently detected asteroids as faint as V=20. ATLAS-P also enabled the development of software for fully robotic operation and simultaneous control of the four cameras.
The full ATLAS-Teide installation will consist of four such modules housed in a roll-off roof building. This configuration will cover the same sky area as the existing ATLAS units but offers significant advantages in cost, maintenance, and flexibility. For instance, all modules can point to the same field to achieve an effective aperture equivalent to a 1.1 m telescope, allowing the detection of fainter near-Earth objects (NEOs). Alternatively, shorter exposure times and advanced detection techniques, such as synthetic tracking, can improve the detection of very fast-moving NEOs. This innovative approach positions ATLAS-Teide as a transformative addition to the global asteroid impact monitoring network.