MRI-R2 Consortium Acquisition: Targeted Expansions of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network's Wavelength, Geographic, and User-Community Footprints

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).In this day of modern large telescopes, small telescopes are still actively making significant contributions to our knowledge about the universe and its constituents, from Gamma Ray Bursts at the edge of the universe to nearby stars and solar system bodies. A consortium of colleges in the southeastern United States has assembled an impressive network of small telescopes spread around the globe under the leadership of Dr. Daniel Reichart of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Originally designed for the specific purpose of rapidly following up on "transient events" - sudden changes on the sky due to the explosive death throes of stars for example - their telescopes are also heavily used by both professional researchers and their students at a number of colleges and universities in the southeast as well as by elementary and secondary educators and their students. Dr. Reichart and his team are now planning to add new capabilities to the network, providing increased coverage around the globe to monitor our changing skies. Optical telescopes work best at night of course, so if astronomers want to monitor objects in the sky around the clock, they must have telescopes spread around the world. To be sure of the coverage, it is also necessary to have multiple telescopes in case the weather is bad at some of the locations. The National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation program is providing the funding for the new telescopes through its Division of Astronomical Sciences.