The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT): A Small Robotic Telescope for Large-Area Synoptic Surveys

Abstract

The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) project is a survey for planetary transits of bright stars. It consists of a small-aperture, wide-field automated telescope located at Winer Observatory near Sonoita, Arizona. The telescope surveys a set of 26 ◦ ×26 ◦ fields, together covering about 25 % of the Northern sky, targeting stars in the range of 8 < V < 10 mag. This paper describes the system hardware and software and discusses the quality of the observations. We show that KELT is able to achieve the necessary photometric precision to detect planetary transits around solar-type main sequence stars. Subject headings: techniques: photometric – surveys – planetary systems 1.