The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT): A Small Robotic Telescope for Large‐Area Synoptic Surveys

• Published in: Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Vol. 119; no. 858; pp. 923 - 935
• Main Authors: Pepper, Joshua, Pogge, Richard W., DePoy, D. L., Marshall, J. L., Stanek, K. Z., Stutz, Amelia M., Poindexter, Shawn, Siverd, Robert, O’Brien, Thomas P., Trueblood, Mark, Trueblood, Patricia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago, IL The University of Chicago Press 01-08-2007; University of Chicago Press
• Subjects: Astronomical magnitude; Astronomical photometry; Astronomical transits; Astronomy; Cameras; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Field of view; Light curves; Observatories; Pixels; Telescopes
• ISSN: 0004-6280; 1538-3873
• DOI: 10.1086/521836

The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) project is a survey for planetary transits of bright stars. It consists of a small‐aperture, wide‐field automated telescope located at Winer Observatory near Sonoita, Arizona. The telescope surveys a set of 26° × 26° fields that together cover about 25% of the northern sky, and targets stars in the range of
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mag, searching for transits by close‐in Jupiters. This paper describes the system hardware and software and discusses the quality of the observations. We show that KELT is able to achieve the necessary photometric precision to detect planetary transits around solar‐type main‐sequence stars.