The International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) as a Variability Time Machine

During the year 2012 the International Liquid Mirror Telescope (a collaboration between astronomical institutions in Belgium, Canada, India and Poland) will see first light. The instrument will provide substantial, in-depth sky coverage and make an unprecedented number of nightly observations

Activation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 by an oxidative stress

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Surveys with the 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope

The working principle of liquid mirror telescopes (LMTs) is first reminded as well as their advantages and disadvantages over classical telescopes. For several obvious reasons (access to regions near the south galactic pole, galactic center, good image quality, ...), a best site location for such a LMT is somewhere in the Atacama desert. At latitudes near -22 - -29 degree, a deep (B = 24 mag.) LMT survey will approximately cover 90 square degrees at high galactic latitude, specially useful for gravitational lensing studies, for the identification of various classes of interesting extragalactic objects (cf. clusters, supernovae, etc. at high redshift) and subsequent follow-up observations with 8m-class telescopes. A short description of the handling of data products is also presented

Surveys with the 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope Project (ILMT) (poster)

The working principle of liquid mirror telescopes (LMTs) is first reviewed along with their advantages and disadvantages over classical telescopes. For several reasons (access to regions near the south galactic pole, galactic center, good image quality, etc.), an excellent site for such an LMT is the Atacama desert. A deep (B~24 mag) LMT survey at latitudes near -22deg -- -29deg will cover ~90 square degrees at high galactic latitude and be especially useful for gravitational lensing studies, for the identification of various classes of interesting extragalactic objects (cf. clusters, supernovae, etc. at high redshift) and for subsequent follow-up observations with 8 m-class telescopes. A short description of the handling of data products is also presented

Radial velocities with the Gaia RVS spectrometer

Four different method are used to derive radial velocities from spectra observed by the Gaia Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS). They are briefly presented here together with very preliminary results

The 4m international liquid mirror telescope (ILMT)

The entire funding has recently been obtained in Belgium for the construction of a 4m Liquid Mirror Telescope. Its prime focus will be equipped with a semi-conventional glass corrector allowing to correct for the TDI effect and a thinned, high quantum efficiency, 4K × 4K pixel equivalent CCD camera. It will be capable of subarcsecond imaging in the i'(760 nm) and possibly r', g' band(s) over a field of ~ 30' in diameter. This facility will be entirely dedicated to a deep photometric and astrometric variability survey over a period of ~ 5 years. In this paper, the working principle of liquid mirror telescopes is first recalled, along with the advantages and disadvantages of the latter over classical telescopes. Several science cases are described. For a good access to one of the galactic poles, the best image quality sites for the ILMT are located either in Northern Chile (latitude near -29°30') or in North-East India (Nainital Hills, latitude near +29°30'). At those geographic latitudes, a deep (i' = 22.5 mag.) survey will approximately cover 90 square degrees at high galactic latitude, which is very useful for gravitational lensing studies as well as for the identification of various classes of interesting galactic and extragalactic objects (cf. microlensed stars, supernovae, clusters, etc.). A description of the telescope, its instrumentation and the handling of the data is also presented

HE 0435-1223 lensed QSO VRi light curves (Ricci+, 2011)

We present VRi photometric observations of the quadruply imaged quasar HE0435-1223, carried out with the Danish 1.54m telescope at the La Silla Observatory. Our aim was to monitor and study the magnitudes and colors of each lensed component as a function of time.VizieR On-line Data Catalog: J/A+A/528/A42. Originally published in: 2011A&A...528A..42