The fly's eye project: Sidereal tracking on a hexapod mount

Abstract

The driving objective of the Fly's Eye Project is a high resolution, high coverage time-domain survey in multiple optical passbands: our goal is to cover the entire visible sky above the 30° horizontal altitude with a cadence of ~ 3 min. Imaging is intended to perform with 19 wide-field cameras mounted on a hexapod platform. The essence of the hexapod allows us to build an instrument that does not require any kind of precise alignment and, in addition, the similar mechanics can be involved independently of the geographical location of the device. Here we summarize our early results with a single camera, focusing on the sidereal tracking as it is performed with the hexapod built by our group.