Survey type astronomical survey | Target supernova | |
The All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae or ASAS-SN is an automated program to search for new supernovae. It has robotic telescopes in both the northern and southern hemispheres. It can survey the entire sky every two days.
There are four telescopes at Haleakala and another four at Cerro Tololo, an LCOGT site. Eight more telescopes will be deployed in 2017, with funds from the Moore Foundation. All the telescopes (Nikon telephoto f400/2.8 lenses) have a diameter of 14 cm and ProLine PL230 CCD cameras. The pixels in the cameras are 7.8 arc seconds wide, so that follow up observations on other telescopes are required to get a more accurate location.
The main goal of the project is to look for bright supernovae. However other transient objects are frequently discovered, including nearby tidal disruption events, cataclysmic variables, and stellar flares, including several of the largest flares ever seen. It can detect new objects with magnitudes between 17 and 8.
Objects discovered receive designations starting with ASASSN followed by a dash, a two digit year and letters, for example ASASSN-15lh.