FRAM Telescopes

FRAM Telescopes

FRAM (F/(Ph)otometric Robotic Atmospheric Monitor) is a series of small robotic telescopes primarily designed for continuous atmospheric monitoring of astronomical sites to measure atmospheric transparency required with high spatial or temporal resolution. The original FRAM has been operated at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina for more than a decade, while three more FRAMs are foreseen for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Two FRAM sites are equipped, in addition to a primary wide-field telephoto lens, with larger diameter traditional telescopes intended for follow-up and monitoring observations of a wide range of  transient objects (gamma-ray bursts, variable stars, comets, etc.).

🔭 The Telescopes

The following pair of FRAM telescopes is participating in the GRANDMA network:

FRAM-Auger : 30 cm f/6.8 telescope located at Pierre Auger Observatory, Malargue, Argentina. Equipped with B, V, R, and I filters; field of view 60′×60′, pixel scale 0.92″/pixel.

FRAM-CTA-N : 25 cm f/6.3 telescope located at Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain. Equipped with B, V, R, and z filters; field of view 26′×26′, pixel scale 1.52″/pixel.

👥 Team

Michael Prouza, Jan Ebr, Petr Janeček, Martin Mašek, Ronan Cunniffe, Sergey Karpov (Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Martin Jelinek (Astronomical Institute of Czech Academy of Sciences)

🤝 Partners

FRAM is maintained by the Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, and funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.

📚 References

  1. Janeček, Petr et al. “FRAM telescopes and their measurements of aerosol content at the Pierre Auger Observatory and at future sites of the Cherenkov Telescope Array”, Atmospheric Monitoring for High Energy Astroparticle Detectors, Anacapri, Italy, EPJ Web of Conferences, Volume 197, id.02008.
  2. Ebr, J. et al. “FRAM: showers, comets, GRBs and popular science”, Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica (Serie de Conferencias) Vol. 45, pp. 114–117 (2014).
  3. Prouza, Michael et al. “FRAM—The Robotic Telescope for Monitoring the Wavelength Dependence of Extinction: Description of Hardware, Data Analysis, and Results”, Advances in Astronomy, 2010, article id. 849382.