The Hungarian Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) project is a network of six small fully automated "HAT" telescopes. The scientific goal of the project is to detect and characterize
extrasolar planets
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...
using the
transit method
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...
. This network is used also to find and follow bright
variable star
A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are classified as e ...
s. The network is maintained by the
Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian.
The HAT acronym stands for ''Hungarian-made Automated Telescope'', because it was developed by a small group of Hungarians who met through the Hungarian Astronomical Association. The project started in 1999 and has been fully operational since May 2001.
Equipment
The prototype instrument, HAT-1 was built from a 180 mm focal length and 65 mm aperture
Nikon
(, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group.
Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...
telephoto lens
A telephoto lens, in photography and cinematography, is a specific type of a long-focus lens in which the physical length of the lens is shorter than the focal length. This is achieved by incorporating a special lens group known as a ''telephoto ...
and a
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
KAF-0401E chip of 512 × 768, 9 μm
pixels
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the sm ...
. The test period was from 2000 to 2001 at the
Konkoly Observatory
Konkoly Observatory ( hu, Konkoly Thege Miklós Csillagászati Intézet; obs. code: 053) is an astronomical observatory located in Budapest, Hungary is part of the Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences ( hu, Csillagászati és ...
in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
.
HAT-1 was transported from Budapest to the
Steward Observatory
Steward Observatory is the research arm of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona (UArizona). Its offices are located on the UArizona campus in Tucson, Arizona (US). Established in 1916, the first telescope and building were f ...
,
Kitt Peak
Kitt Peak ( ood, Ioligam) is a mountain in the U.S. state of Arizona, and at is the highest point in the Quinlan Mountains. It is the location of the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The radio telescope at the observatory is one of ten dishes co ...
,
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, AlÄ á¹£onak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, USA, in January 2001. The transportation caused serious damage to the equipment.
Later built telescopes use
Canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
11 cm diameter f/1.8L lenses for a wide-field of 8°×8°. It is a fully automated instrument with 2K x 2K
Charge-coupled device
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
(CCD) sensors. One HAT instrument operates at the
Wise Observatory
The Florence and George Wise Observatory (IAU code 097) is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Tel Aviv University. It is located west of the town of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev desert near the edge of the Ramon Crater, and it is ...
.
HAT is controlled by a single
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
PC without human supervision. Data are stored in a
MySQL
MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...
database.
HAT-South
From 2009, three other locations joined the HATNet with telescopes of completely new design. The telescopes are deployed to
Australia,
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
and
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
. Each system has eight (2*4) joint-mounted, quasi-parallel
Takahashi Epsilon (180 mm diameter, f/2.8)
astrograph
An astrograph (or astrographic camera) is a telescope designed for the sole purpose of astrophotography. Astrographs are mostly used in wide-field astronomical surveys of the sky and for detection of objects such as asteroids, meteors, a ...
s with Apogee 4k*4k
CCDs with overlapping fields of view. The processing computers are
Xenomai
Xenomai is a real-time development software framework cooperating with the Linux kernel to provide pervasive, interface-agnostic, hard real-time computing support to user space application software seamlessly integrated into the Linux environme ...
-based industrial PCs with 10 TB of storage.
Participants in the project
HAT-1 was developed during the undergraduate (and also the first year graduate) studies of Gáspár Bakos (
Eötvös Loránd University, now at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
) and at
Konkoly Observatory
Konkoly Observatory ( hu, Konkoly Thege Miklós Csillagászati Intézet; obs. code: 053) is an astronomical observatory located in Budapest, Hungary is part of the Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences ( hu, Csillagászati és ...
(Budapest), under the supervision of Dr. Géza Kovács. In the development József Lázár, István Papp and Pál Sári also played an important role.
More than 100 people have contributed altogether to the seventy planet discovery papers published or submitted by the project as of Feb 2020. Gáspár Bakos, István Papp, József Lázár, Pál Sári, have contributed to all of the planet discoveries by HAT. Other participants who have contributed to at least 10 discovery papers include: Joel Hartman (62 papers, Princeton), Robert Noyes (55,
CfA), David Latham (44, CfA), Zoltán Csubry (43, Princeton), Kaloyan Penev (43,
UT Dallas
The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD or UT Dallas) is a public research university in Richardson, Texas. It is one of the largest public universities in the Dallas area and the northernmost institution of the University of Texas system. It wa ...
), Géza Kovács (42, Konkoly Observatory), Guillermo Torres (40, CfA), Geoffrey Marcy (38,
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
), Gilbert Esquerdo (37, CfA), Waqas Bhatti (34, Princeton), Miguel de Val-Borro (34,
Goddard Space Flight Center), Lars Buchhave (33,
Niels Bohr Institute
The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics ...
), Daniel Bayliss (32,
University of Warwick
, mottoeng = Mind moves matter
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £7.0 million (2021)
, budget = £698.2 million (2020â ...
), Dimitar Sasselov (32, CfA), Bence Béky (31, CfA), Andrew Howard (31,
Caltech
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
), Debra Fischer (30,
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
), George Zhou (30, CfA), Néstor Espinoza (29,
STSCI
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and science operations center for the ...
), Andrés Jordán (29,
Adolfo Ibáñez University
The Adolfo Ibáñez University ( es, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez) (UAI) is a private research university in Santiago, Chile associated with the Adolfo Ibáñez Foundation. In 1988, in accordance with new educational legislation, a university was ...
), Robert Stefanik (29, CfA), Rafael Brahm (28,
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (''PUC or UC Chile'') ( es, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) is one of the six Catholic Universities existing in the Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical universities i ...
), Thomas Henning (28,
MPIA), Luigi Mancini (28,
University of Rome Tor Vergata
Tor Vergata University of Rome, also known as the University of Rome II ( it, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"), is a public research university located in Rome, Italy. Located in the southeastern suburb of Rome, the university combine ...
), Markus Rabus (28,
Las Cumbres Observatory
Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) is a network of astronomical observatories run by a non-profit private operating foundation directed by the technologist Wayne Rosing. Its offices are in Goleta, California. The telescopes are located at both north ...
), Vincent Suc (28, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile), John Johnson (27, CfA), R. Paul Butler (20,
Carnegie Institution for Science
The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...
), Simona Ciceri (19, MPIA), Brian Schmidt (19,
ANU), Joao Bento (17, ANU), Thiam-Guan Tan (17, Perth Exoplanet Survey Telescope), Mark Everett (16,
NOAO
The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) was the United States national observatory for ground-based nighttime ultraviolet-optical-infrared (OUVIR) astronomy. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded NOAO to provide forefront astronom ...
), Sam Quinn (16, CfA), Avi Shporer (16,
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
), Allyson Bieryla (14, CfA), Bun'ei Sato (14,
Tokyo Institute of Technology
is a national research university located in Greater Tokyo Area, Japan. Tokyo Tech is the largest institution for higher education in Japan dedicated to science and technology, one of first five Designated National University and selected as ...
), B.J. Fulton (12, Caltech), Howard Isaacson (12,
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
), András Pál (12, CfA), Brigitta Sipőcz (12,
University of Hertfordshire
The University of Hertfordshire (UH) is a public university in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. The university is based largely in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Its antecedent institution, Hatfield Technical College, was founded in 1948 and was ident ...
), Támás Szkelenár (12), Chris Tinney (12,
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...
), Duncan Wright (11,
Australian Astronomical Observatory), Jeffrey Crane (10, Carnegie Institution for Science), Emilio Falco (10, CfA), Paula Sarkis (10, MPIA), and Stephen Shectman (10, Carnegie Institution for Science).
Planets discovered
One-hundred-thirty-four
extrasolar planets
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...
have been discovered so far by the HAT surveys, including a handful of planets that were independently discovered by other groups as well (particularly the
WASP
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...
survey). Sixty-three of these were found by the northern HATNet project, and seventy-one by the southern HATSouth project. All have been discovered using the
transit method
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...
. In addition, a few additional planetary companions to the transiting planets were discovered through radial velocity follow-up observations, including HAT-P-13c, which was the first outer planetary or brown-dwarf companion confirmed with a well-characterised orbit for a system with a transiting planet
''Light green rows indicate that the planet orbits one of the stars in a binary star system.''
North
South
See also
*
List of extrasolar planets
These are lists of exoplanets. Most of these were discovered by the Kepler space telescope. There are an additional 2,054 potential exoplanets from Kepler's first mission yet to be confirmed, as well as 978 from its " Second Light" mission and ...
A subset of HATNet light curves are available at the
NASA Exoplanet Archive
The NASA Exoplanet Archive is an online astronomical exoplanet catalog and data service that collects and serves public data that support the search for and characterization of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) and their host stars. It is part of ...
.
Other extrasolar planet search projects
*
Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey
The Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, or ''TrES'', used three 4-inch (10 cm) telescopes located at Lowell Observatory, Palomar Observatory, and Teide Observatory to locate exoplanets. It was made using the network of small, relatively inexpe ...
or ''TrES''
*
SuperWASP
WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky, ...
or ''WASP''
*
XO Telescope
The XO Telescope is an astronomical telescope located on the 3,054 m (10,000 foot) summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii. It consists of two 200-millimeter telephoto camera lenses, and resembles binoculars in shape. It is used by the XO Project ...
or ''XO''
*
Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope or ''KELT''
*
Next-Generation Transit Survey
The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km ...
or ''NGTS''
Extrasolar planet searching spacecraft
*
COROT
CoRoT (French: ; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly th ...
is a
CNES
The (CNES; French: ''Centre national d'études spatiales'') is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is und ...
/
ESA
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, ÃŽle-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...
spacecraft launched in December 2006
* The
Kepler Mission
The Kepler space telescope is a disused space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbi ...
is a
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
spacecraft launched in March 2009
* The
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS, Explorer 95 or MIDEX-7) is a space telescope for NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the ''Kepler ...
(TESS) is a
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
spacecraft launched in March 2018
References
External links
The HAT Exoplanet Surveys
The HATNet Exoplanet SurveyThe HATSouth Exoplanet SurveyWise observatory Hungarian-made Automated TelescopeThe Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatnet Project
Telescopes
Astrometry
Exoplanet search projects by small telescope