Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescopes (BEST and BEST II)

Both telescopes are wide-field ground based telescopes. They were built and operated prior, during and after the CoRoT mission (2007- 2012).

BEST

BEST (Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope) was a ground-based photometric observation system to detect transit events of Jupiter-sized planets (20 cm aperture). 2004, BEST was located at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP). OHP is a famous place as the first exoplanet around a sunlike star had been detected from the site. BEST performed variability characterization of the target fields of the COROT space mission, approximately two years before the satellite mission. In addition a transit search program was executed. It is not used anymore for exoplanet research.

BEST II

BEST II, a small automatic telescope with 25 cm aperture, was dedicated to photometric measurements from the southern hemisphere of stellar intensity variations. The prime use of the system was robotic observational ground-based support of the COROT space mission (CNES) prior to and during mission operation. BEST II is not used anymore for exoplanet research, but is still operated at the Observatorio Cerro Armazones (OCA) by Instituto de Astronomia de la Universidád Católica del Norte (UCN) in Antofagasta, and the Astronomical Institute, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (AIRUB). The observatory is located at an altitude of 2817m in the immediate vicinity of Cerro Armazones, which has recently been selected by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for construction of the next-generation telescope E-ELT (European Extra Large Telescope).

Astronomie