A Dedicated Quasar Monitoring Telescope

Under the auspices of Sjur Refsdal, 25 astrophysicists and engineers from Germany and Scandinavia have founded a non-profit association, aiming at the use of an intelligent telescope for quasar monitoring in the optical (Borgeest et al. 1993). Beyond a better understanding of the physics in quasars, the scientific goals are determining the cosmic distance scale at large redshifts and constraining the nature of Dark Matter, both using the gravitational lens effect. Thus, targets of special interest are the multiply lensed quasars and some well-known violently variable blazars. The optical photometry will in part be carried out simultaneously to observations with, e.g., ISO, ROSAT, CGRO and various radio telescopes. For the first time, a complete quasar sample will be monitored continuously, namely a sub-sample of the all-sky 1 Jy catalogue (5 GHz). Since we will collect about 10 6 photometric data points during the programme, Megaphot has been chosen as name for the association. Members from Hamburg and Bochum intend to test the 1.5 m Hexapod Telescope (HPT) astronomically in the very near future. The HPT hardware was developed and built by Vertex Antennentechnik, Duisburg together with the Ruhr-Universität, Bochum and Carl Zeiss, Jena; the intelligent software and weather control requires still some work. When working well, the system will be placed at a site with excellent astronomical conditions. After a few years of exclusive quasar monitoring, it will be used as a German photometry telescope.