The Palomar QUEST Variability survey is a project utilizing the
48 inch Oschin Schmidt Telescope at the Palomar Observatory of the
California
Institute of Technology with the new large area QUEST camera, a mossaic
of 112 CCD's covering the full field of view of the telescope (
approximately
40 x 40 ), built at Yale University and Indiana
University.
The camera will be installed at the prime focus of the Oschin Telescope
and commissioned in early 2003 . Observing will start later that year.
The Survey is expected to cover about 1/3 of the full sky (abbout 15000
square degrees in equatorial band between plus/minus 250 in
declination).
We anticipate that the scientific collaboration in this project will include, in addition to scientists from Yale, Indiana and CalTech, scientists from other institutions such as The Jet Propulsion Labs, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the University of Illinois.