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Sleuth: The Palomar Planet Finder

The Palomar Observatory's smallest telescope is known as Sleuth. Sleuth is a
robotic telescope dedicated toward the search for planets around other stars.
Specifically it is searching for signs of gas-giant planets passing
directly in front of (transiting) a star.
To do this
Sleuth nightly monitors roughly 10,000 stars 6 degree square
field-of-view in the hunt for these transiting extrasolar gas-giant planets. This planet finder is
the third instrument in a network that also contains STARE (located in Tenerife)
and PSST (located in northern Arizona). Candidates identified by Sleuth will be
observed by our automated follow-up telescope (currently under construction in
the same enclosure) to rule out most forms of false positives resulting from
eclipsing binaries.
Press release: Astronomers Find Largest Exoplanet to Date
Press release: Astronomers Find Their Third Planet With Novel Telescope Network
Press release: Jupiter-Sized Transiting
Planet Found by Astronomers Using Novel Telescope Network.

Computer generated simulation of TrES-2. Credit: Jeffrey Hall, Lowell Observatory
More on TrES-2
Press image showing relative sizze of Sleuth & Keck Telescopes:
Photo of Sleuth from the December, 2004 issue of National Geographic Magazine
Slueth's Home Page
Be sure to visit Snoop (the all
sky camera located in the same enclosure as Sleuth) for live nightly views of Palomar's night sky.
Scientific publications from Sleuth.
Choose one of the telescopes listed on the right to see images and learn more
about another of the Palomar Observatory's Telescopes.
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