The Las Cumbres Observatory is a private foundation planning a network of 5-7 homogenous 2m telescopes around the world, and an associate network of smaller educational telescopes for schools.
As I'm told, they have one operational telescope and one under construction.
The observatory has funding, thanks to a .com boomer, they are hiring serious staff to do serious work, and possibly fishing for science ideas.
Lots of things spring to mind, including planet transits and astroseismology (well I know they know that); gamma ray burst optical transients, microlensing, white dwarf oscillation timing, flaring due to tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes and so on and so forth.
I had heard a similar idea floated as something people should try to get the National Science Foundation to do, but if Las Cumbres does it properly, which they seem to be doing, and if they're open to science proposals or guest observing, which I hear they may well be, then it will be just totally awesome.
And, most importantly, their web pages will have Icelandic translation. Of course.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
