The Fly's Eye Camera System: An Instrument Design for Large Étendue Time Domain Surveys

Abstract

In this paper we briefly summarize the design concepts of the Fly's Eye Camera System, a proposed high resolution all-sky monitoring device which intends to perform high cadence time domain astronomy in multiple optical passbands while still accomplish a high étendue. Funding has already been accepted by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in order to design and build a Fly's Eye device unit. Beyond the technical details and the actual scientific goals, this paper also discusses the possibilities and yields of a network operation involving ˜10 sites distributed geographically in a nearly homogeneous manner. Currently, we expect to finalize the mount assembly - that performs the sidereal tracking during the exposures - until the end of 2012 and to have a working prototype with a reduced number of individual cameras sometime in the spring or summer of 2013.