At the Venezuela National Astronomical Observatory we are carrying out variability surveys spanning many hundreds of square degrees near the celestial equator, using an 8k x 8k CCD Mosaic Camera optimized for drift-scanning on a 1m Schmidt telescope. Among the initial efforts was a project to obtain the first moderately deep, homogeneous sample of young stars over an area of ~180sqr.deg. encompassing the entire Orion OB1 association, one of the nearest and most active regions of star formation. The results show that variability is a powerful technique to identify pre-main sequence populations, specially in sparse areas devoid of gas and dust. We are currently developing a massive database, equipped with web-based data mining tools, that will make our data and results available to the astronomical community.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0304081,
title = {Massive Variability Surveys from Venezuela},
author = {Cesar Briceno},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0304081},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 postscript figures, to appear in the proceedings of the International Symposium on Astrophysics Research and on the Dialogue between Science and Religion, Vatican Observatory 2002, C.D. Impey & C.E. Petry, editors