SMARTS

Small & Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System

smarts

The SMARTS Consortium operates four small telescopes (1.5-m, 1.3-m, 1.0-m and 0.9-m) on Cerro Tololo.  Membership in SMARTS is open to individuals or institutions, including international partners.

Science Highlights

  • Frederick Walter, along with Andrew Battisti and Sarah E. Towers (Stony Brook University) have created the Stony Brook / SMARTS Atlas of (mostly) Southern Novae. This atlas contains spectra and photometry obtained with SMARTS since 2003. Abstract | Paper | Atlas

  • Fabienne Bastien, Keivan Stassun and David Weintraub (Vanderbilt, Fisk) serendipitously observed V1647 Ori, an enigmatic eruptive young variable star, at different phases of its 2002-2003 and 2008-2009 outbursts.  Given the timing of our observations, we were able to catch several transient signals underneath the object's dramatic increase in brightness caused by a surge in the rate of accretion of circumstellar material.  Most notable is the detection of a short-term, but highly significant, 3 hour period that is consistent with a higher order pulsational mode of the star.  We posit that this period thus corresponds to stellar pulsations excited by the sudden increase in the accretion rate at the phase of the outburst during which we detect it. Abstract | Paper | Figures

  • Sure in the knowledge that the famous recurrent nova U Scorpii would have an upcoming eruption, Brad Schaefer (Louisiana State University) started a long series of eclipse timings with the SMARTS 0.9-m telescope at CTIO.  U Sco erupted in January 2010, as predicted, and I then started taking a second series of eclipse times so as to measure the post-eruption period, and hence the period change.  The resultant O-C curve shows a stark period change (2.6+-0.1 x10^-5 days) across the 2010 eruption.  This period change is substantially larger than the fairly-uncertain period change across the 1999 U Sco eruption (0.43+-0.69 x 10^-5 days), see Schaefer (2011, ApJ, 742, 112).  The 2010 period change determines that the mass ejected was 2.5 x 10^-5 M_sun.  In the preceding eleven years since the 1999 eruption, the accretion rate was 0.02 x 10^-5 M_sun/year on average, with an uncertainty of about 50%.  So the 2010 eruption blew off mass from the white dwarf (2.5 x 10^-5 M_sun) that is ten times more than it accreted during the previous eruption cycle (~0.2 x 10^-5 M_Sun).  Hence, the U Sco white dwarf is losing mass over time, and it will not become a Type Ia supernova. Abstract | Paper | Figure