Astron. Nachr. / AN 327, No. 8, 800 – 802 (2006) / DOI 10.1002/asna.200610682 The WASP project in the era of robotic telescope networks D.J. Christian 1,⋆ D.L. Pollacco 1 , I. Skillen 2 , J. Irwin 3 , W.I. Clarkson 4 , A. Collier Cameron 5 , N. Evans 6 , A. Fitzsimmons 1 , C.A. Haswell 4 , C. Hellier 6 , S.T. Hodgkin 3 , K. Horne 5 , S.R. Kane 5 , F.P. Keenan 1 , T.A. Lister 5 , A.J. Norton 4 , J. Osborne 7 , R. Ryans 1 , R.A. Street 1 , R.G. West 7 , and P.J. Wheatley 7 1 APS Division, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK 2 Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Apartado de correos 321, E-38700 Santa Cruz de la Palma, Tenerife, Spain 3 Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA, UK 4 Department of Physics & Astronomy, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK 5 School of Physics & Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, North Haugh, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9SS, UK 6 Astrophysics Group, School of Chemistry & Physics, Keele University, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK 7 Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK Received 2006 Apr 10, accepted 2006 May 17 Published online 2006 Aug 22 Key words techniques: photometric – instrumentation: photometers – stars: planetary systems We present the current status of the WASP project, a pair of wide angle photometric telescopes, individually called Super- WASP. SuperWASP-I is located in La Palma, and SuperWASP-II at Sutherland in South Africa. SW-I began operations in April 2004. SW-II is expected to be operational in early 2006. Each SuperWASP instrument consists of up to 8 individual cameras using ultra-wide field lenses backed by high-quality passively cooled CCDs. Each camera covers 7.8 × 7.8 sq degrees of sky, for nearly 500 sq degrees of total sky coverage. One of the current aims of the WASP project is the search for extra-solar planet transits with a focus on brighter stars in the magnitude range ∼8 to 13. Additionally, WASP will search for optical transients, track Near-Earth Objects, and study many types of variable stars and extragalactic objects. The collaboration has developed a custom-built reduction pipeline that achieves better than 1 percent photometric preci- sion. We discuss future goals, which include: nightly on-mountain reductions that could be used to automatically drive alerts via a small robotic telescope network, and possible roles of the WASP telescopes as providers in such a network. Additional technical details of the telescopes, data reduction, and consortium members and institutions can be found on the web site at: http://www.superwasp.org/. c  2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH& Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1 Introduction The era of small robotic telescopes is upon us. These tele- scopes provide a high degree of observing capability in many areas of astronomy. Combining these small telescopes into a larger network can increase their scientific impact many-fold. New transient phenomena detected by 1 tele- scope can be sent to the network for follow-up observa- tions. Such is currently done with the GCN (Barthelmy et al. 1998). Having a robotic network will also enable the last poorly studied field of astronomy to be explored, the tem- poral domain. Although SuperWASP I (SW I) and SuperWASP II (SW II) are located at similar longitudes, they cover the northern and southern hemisphere, respectively. Combining SW I and SW II in a network would allow coordinated ob- serving programs based on our currently scripted observa- tions. Although, initially the telescope may not be providers to a larger network, they could request observations, and thus act as a client to a larger heterogeneous telescope net- work (HTN). At present, the SuperWASP telescopes are pri- marily dedicated to the search for extra-solar planet (ESP) ⋆ Corresponding author: d.christian@qub.ac.uk transits and are one of the largest programs currently under- way (Horne 2003). Here we present the current status of the SuperWASP telescopes and plans for their inclusion into an HTN. 1.1 Science objectives The SuperWASP telescopes were designed to cover a large area of sky and achieve photometric accuracy of a few mil- limags. These specifications make SuperWASP ideal for monitoring several 10’s of thousands of stars to search for transiting extrasolar planets, discovery and follow-up of op- tical transients (including optical flashed from γ -ray bursts), and the discovery and tracking of near-Earth objects and as- teroids. Naturally SuperWASP is also well suited for a va- riety of wide field imaging and temporal studies, such as discovery and monitoring of variable stars, stellar flares and other periodic and aperiodic celestial phenomena. First re- sults from the study of variable stars in the Pleiades have been presented by Lister et al. (2005). c  2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH& Co. KGaA, Weinheim