HATNet Project

The Hungarian Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) project is a network of six small fully automated "HAT" telescopes. The scientific goal of the project is to detect and characterize extrasolar planets using the transit method. This network is used also to find and follow bright variable stars. The network is maintained by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The HAT acronym stands for Hungarian-made Automated Telescope, because it was developed by a small group of Hungarians who met through the Hungarian Astronomical Association. The project started in 1999 and has been fully operational since May 2001.

The prototype instrument, HAT-1 was built from a 180 mm focal length and 65 mm aperture Nikon telephoto lens and a Kodak KAF-0401E chip of 512 × 768, 9 μm pixels. The test period was from 2000 to 2001 at the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest.

HAT-1 was transported from Budapest to the Steward Observatory, Kitt Peak, Arizona, USA, in January 2001. The transportation caused serious damage to the equipment.

Later built telescopes use Canon 11 cm diameter f/1.8L lenses for a wide-field of 8°×8°. It is a fully automated instrument with 2K x 2K Charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors. One HAT instrument operates at the Wise Observatory.

HAT is controlled by a single Linux PC without human supervision. Data are stored in a MySQL database.

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