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Newsletters
Recent news
- 2017 April:
Remaining units tested and installed.
- 2017 February:
First light curves from the Fly's Eye (see in the gallery).
- 2016 March:
Fly's Eye installed at Piszkéstető. First mosaic image obtained (JPG, scaled down to 70%, 4.6M).
- 2015 July:
Weatherproof enclosure built. For pictures of the enclosure and the camera rack see the presentation at the XXIXth IAU GA.
- 2014 August:
Custom plastic parts for camera racks 3D printed, camera rack assembled.
- 2013 December 13.:
A working hexapod model is designed for demonstrational purposes. If you have access to a 3d-printer, you can download the model from Thingiverse and print your own hexapod for your desktop.
- 2013 November:
The prototype of a new USB-drive is ready. This is a fast, small-capacity drive (currently 2MB), that is failsafe, has no moving parts, and is infinitely rewritable (unlike traditional USB drives/SD cards). This will be mainly used to store the system logs.
- 2013 September 15.:
The building of the instrument's future substructure, an iron-reinforced concrete block at Piszkéstető is done.
- 2013 June 5.:
The 3D printer has arrived. This will be used for printing
uniquely designed plastic components, e.g. cable sorters.
- 2013 June 7 – 12.: The first long-term tests
with one camera at Piszkéstető. The tracking seems to
work now fine even at the level of ~2"/pixel (for these tests, we
used an 800mm, f/8 mirror lens, yielding a plate scale comparable to the seeing).
- 2013 May 22.:
The first set of Sloan g/r/i filters has arrived.
- 2013 May 1.:
First light of the Fly's Eye with a single camera
looking towards the zenith. The tracking works (see animations with tracking off and tracking on), but needs
refining. The animations show a cadence of ~15 sec and 44"/pixel resolution, covering 6×6°.
- 2013 April 30.:
Final assebly
of the leg electronics, communication interface and embedded control.
- 2013 April 23.:
First light of the FLI CCD with the target lens.
- 2013 April 16.:
Final assebly of the
individual legs as well as the complete hexapod (without the
electronics).
- 2013 April:
Control of the Canon objective works.
- 2013 February:
Manufacturing of hexapod leg parts and components
has been started.
- 2013 January:
CAD drawings have been finalized.
- 2013 January:
Prototypes of motor driver and position encoder circuit
boards passed the performance tests.
Milestones
The milestones are noted as
past, passed successfully,
on what we are working now and
further ones.
- 2011 summer:
the first design initiatives of the Fly's Eye camera system;
- 2012 February:
a proposal has been submitted to the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences (HAS), applying for funds to build a full working instrument;
- 2012 April –:
theoretical and mechanical design of the hexapod platform;
- 2012 June:
the proposal has been accepted by the HAS
(LP2012-31, “Lendület” programme);
- 2012 fall:
seeking for grants to build two other Fly's Eye devices;
- 2013 April: the hexapod
platform is ready and working;
- 2013 May, early June:
first light measurements, focusing on proper sidereal tracking and
astrometric calibration;
- 2015 summer:
weatherproof enclosure built;
- 2016 March:
first multi-camera observations with 7 units;
- 2017 February:
first light curves;
- 2017 April:
remaining units tested and installed;
- 2017 summer/autumn:
observations with the full camera system, fine tuning of the reduction pipeline
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