SAINT (Small Aperture Imaging Network Telescope) -- a wide-field telescope complex for detecting and studying optical transients at times from milliseconds to years

Grigory Beskin; Anton Biryukov; Alexey Gutaev; Sergey Karpov; Gor Oganesyan; Gennady Valyavin; Azamat Valeev; Valery Vlasyuk; Nadezhda Lyapsina; Vyacheslav Sasyuk

arXiv · 2312.01369

SAINT (Small Aperture Imaging Network Telescope) -- a wide-field telescope complex for detecting and studying optical transients at times from milliseconds to years

Grigory Beskin·Anton Biryukov·Alexey Gutaev·Sergey Karpov·Gor Oganesyan·Gennady Valyavin·Azamat Valeev·Valery Vlasyuk·Nadezhda Lyapsina·Vyacheslav Sasyuk

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Abstract

(Abridged) In this paper, we present a project of multi-channel wide-field optical sky monitoring system with high temporal resolution -- Small Aperture Imaging Network Telescope (SAINT) -- mostly built from off-the-shelf components and aimed towards searching and studying optical transient phenomena on the shortest time scales. The instrument consists of 12 channels each containing 30cm (F/1.5) objectives mounted on separate mounts with pointing speeds up to 50deg/s. Each channel is equipped with a 4128x4104 pixel, and a set of photometric $griz$ filters and linear polarizers. At the heart of every channel is a custom built reducer-collimator module allowing rapid switching of an effective focal length of the telescope -- due to it the system is capable to operate in either wide-field survey or narrow-field follow-up modes. In the first case, the field of view of the instrument is 470 square degrees and the detection limits (5$\sigma$ level at 5500$\AA$) are 12.5-21 mag for exposure times of 20 ms - 20 min correspondingly. In the second, follow-up regime, all telescopes are oriented towards the single target, and SAINT becomes an equivalent to a 1m telescope, with the field of view reduced to 11$'$ x 11$'$, and the exposure times decreased down to 0.6 ms. Different channels may then have different filters installed, thus allowing a detailed study -- acquiring both color and polarization information -- of a target object with highest possible temporal resolution. The operation of SAINT will allow acquiring an unprecedented amount of data on various classes of astrophysical phenomena, from near-Earth to extragalactic ones, while its multi-channel design and the use of commercially available components allows easy expansion of its scale, and thus performance and detection capabilities.

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Grigory Beskin, Anton Biryukov, Alexey Gutaev, Sergey Karpov, Gor Oganesyan, Gennady Valyavin, Azamat Valeev, Valery Vlasyuk, Nadezhda Lyapsina, Vyacheslav Sasyuk. 2023-12-03. SAINT (Small Aperture Imaging Network Telescope) -- a wide-field telescope complex for detecting and studying optical transients at times from milliseconds to years. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.01369

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