About Gaspar A. Bakos's Work
My research focuses on monitoring the full sky for variability with an unprecedented combination of resolution and coverage both in space and time. Specifically, I am building a very wide field camera system, called HATPI, which will continuously image the entire night sky above 30 degreeselevation (corresponding to 1 PI solid angle) at high spatial resolution, high time resolution (every minute), and highphotometric precision (reaching 0.1%) for 5 years. While this is challenging, and has never been accomplished, technology is now mature enough to develop such a system. HATPI will use a “hedgehog” formation ofnumerous lenses and digital cameras, all placed on a custom developed astronomical mount, and installed at one of the best locations on Earth. The HATPI movie-of-the-sky will have enormous scientific potential. We will discover a large number of transiting extrasolar planets, detect many transient “flashes”, and issue alerts on moving objects.