2020/06/24 by Simona Lombardo, Francisco Prada, Lombardo, S. +48
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.13956
openalex publication_date 2020/06/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present here the Calar Alto Schmidt-Lemaitre Telescope (CASTLE) concept, a technology demonstrator for curved detectors, that will be installed at the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain). This telescope has a wide field of view (2.36x1.56 deg2) and a design, optimised to generate a Point Spread Function with very low level wings and reduced ghost features, which makes it considerably less susceptible to several systematic effects usually affecting similar systems. These characteristics are particularly suited to study the low surface brightness Universe. CASTLE will be able to reach surface brightness orders of magnitude fainter than the sky background level and observe the extremely extended and faint features around galaxies such as tidal features, stellar halos, intra-cluster light, etc. CASTLE will also be used to search and detect astrophysical transients such as gamma ray bursts (GRB), gravitational wave optical counterparts, neutrino counterparts, etc. This will increase the number of precisely localized GRBs from 20% to 60% (in the case of Fermi/GMB GRBs).