NGTS: A twelve telescope array at Paranal

Kurzfassung

The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a suite of twelve independently mounted 0.2-m aperture telescopes located at Cerro Paranal in Chile, and operated by a British – Swiss – German consortium. Originally conceived as a blind photometric survey for transiting exoplanets, NGTS is currently used for a range of exoplanet and non-exoplanet related science. The wide field of view, exquisite pointing precision, and ability to combine data from multiple telescopes results in a photometric performance that is competitive with much larger telescopes. For instance, when combining photometry from several telescopes, we are able to measure exoplanet transits that are just 0.1 per cent deep. In this talk, I will describe the instrument and its performance, discuss our successful transit survey, as well as highlighting some of the science cases that NGTS is currently pursuing.