| Abstract: | Many users of small telescopes are disturbed by the trend of shutting down smaller instruments in order to help fund bigger and bolder ground-based telescopes. Small telescopes can thrive in the shadow of giant new observatories, they say--but only if they are adapted to specialized projects. Telescopes with apertures of 2 meters or less have unique abilities to monitor broad swaths of the sky and stare at the same objects night after night, sometimes for years; various teams are turning small telescopes into robots, creating networks that span the globe and devoting them to survey projects that big telescopes don't have a prayer of tackling. |
