{% extends "base_bootstrap.html" %} {% block title %}ATLAS Static Transients{% endblock %} {% block celestial %} {% endblock %} {% block content %}
The ATLAS project is a pair of 0.5m f/2.0 Schmidt telescopes situated on Mauna Loa and Haleakala in Hawaii (Tonry 2011, PASP, 123, 58). Each telescope is equipped with an STA-1600 10.5x10.5k CCD with 1.86 arcsec pixels giving a FOV of 5.4x5.4 degrees. The first telescope on Haleakala has been fully operational since 2015, and the Mauna Loa telescope was commissioned at the end of January 2017. Each telescope is robotically surveying the sky, covering up to 29,000 square degrees per night on each summit with exposure times of 30s. The current observing pattern uses dithered quads across a sky survey area of 7,250 square degrees per night per summit. Each summit observes the same declination strip every four days, and the summit observing schedules are interlocked such that the whole visible sky is observed every two days. The design sensitivity is around m ~ 20 AB mag in two broad filters (cyan and orange). The primary mission for ATLAS is to act as an asteroid impact early warning system and find near earth objects, but in the course of the ATLAS sky survey it will find a wealth of stationary transients and variables. We intend to make the transient discoveries public with a minimum of delay. Discoveries are made through a custom built difference imaging pipeline and deep reference sky frames, cross-matched against known star, galaxy and transient catalogues.