My group is designing and building cutting-edge astronomical instruments, including survey telescopes, and spectrographs. Our main goal is to characterize the transient and variable sky on subsecond to years time scales.
Current projects include:
LAST - We are building the Large Array Survey Telescopes (LAST) -- an extremely cost-effective wide-field and large survey telescope. [see LAST page for more details].
LUST/DeepSpec - With my collegue Sagi-Ben Ami, we are designing LUST/DeepSpec - a high throughput (>80%), low resolution (R~300) visible-light spectrograph for medium class telescopes. DeepSpec will be a few times faster (i.e., obtaining a spectrum with a given S/N) than common spectrographs.
ULTRASAT - A UV space telescope with an unprecedented field of view and sensitivity. ULTRASAT will be able to search and followup for the electromagnetic counterparts of NS-NS mergers, detect young supernovae hours after their explosion and characterize the UV variable and transient sky. [see ULTRASAT page for more details].
W-FAST - We designed and built the Weizmann Fast Astronomical Survey Telescopes (W-FAST), which is a 55 cm f/1.96 Schmidt telescope equipped with a fast-readout CMOS camera. The telescope was designed and built in the Weizmann Institute [see W-FAST page for more details].
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Left: Ofir Hershko inserting the field flattner into the W-FAST I telescope optical assembly in the Weizmann labs. Bottom: Eramn Ofek inspecting the W-FAST corrector during the assembly in the Weizmann labs.
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