"MASTER" software and observations

Presentation duration: 30 minutes

Presenter: Artem Kuznetsov

At the beginning of the 21st century it became obvious that the use of robotized observatories in Astronomy allows achieving the breakthrough in studies of the extremely non-stationary and short-living phenomena in the Universe. Using the robotic observatories manufactured in the developed countries the prompt emission of the most powerful explosions in Universe - gamma-ray bursts - was discovered. Discovery of dozens and hundreds supernovae allowed to suggest the presence of the so called <<dark>> energy, or the energy of space vacuum, and to discover the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Robotic telescopes are discovering hundreds and thousands of new minor bodies of the Solar system, dozens of planets outside the Solar system (exoplanets), potentially hazardous comets and asteroids. The first Russian robotic telescope MASTER was built near Moscow at 2002 with the support from the Director of <<Moscow Association <<OPTIKA>> S. M. Bodrov. Over the following several years this instrument was used as a test bed for developing the basic principles of creating the robotic photometric system capable of solving a wide range of tasks. First of all, the unique software for real time processing of large format CCD images was developed. The following development of the Network was achieved in 2008-2010 with the beginning of usage of strongly modified MASTER-II systems installed near Blagoveshchensk, Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg and Kislovodsk. The Russian segment of the Network was completed in early 2011. MASTER global robotic network is currently spanning from Blagoveshchensk to Argentina. Currently, there are no other systems similar to the network of optical, broadband MASTER telescopes in Russia, and the main characteristics of the MASTER network (field of view, limiting magnitude, bandwidth, synchronous photometry, polarization-sensitive photometry, pointing speed) exceed other such modern systems worldwide.

Lipunov V.M.
Gorbovskoy E.S.
Denisenko D.V.
Krushinsky V.V.