interesting article on planned all-sky survey

[Stupendous Man <richmond@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>]

  A recent issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society
of the Pacific (vol 116, number 824, October 2004) contains an
article of interest to TASSians.

        "PASS: An All Sky Survey for the Detection of Transiting
         Extrasolar Planets and for Permanent Variable Star Tracking"

            by Deeg et al. 

  You can find this paper via ADS (I've cut the long URL below
in half for clarity)

      http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?
          bibcode=2004PASP..116..985D&db_key=AST&high=416a79eb0011836

or on astro-ph:
 
      http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0408589

  There is also a paper contributed to a conference in July 2004 
describing the first prototype camera in their system:

      http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0409557

I am somewhat disappointed not to be shown results from this prototype,
since the authors write that they did collect data on a number of nights.
They explain that the existing data were collected from a temporary
set-up, while their planned survey requires an instrument which is 
both mounted so that it points in a fixed direction, and operated so
that it observes the same stars at the same altitudes every night;
therefore (I infer) the current camera's data is unworthy of being
analyzed.

  The planned system will use a novel system in which the cameras
take short trailed images of stars always at the same altitudes in 
the sky (hence 4 minutes earlier each night) and use a sort of
"trailed-aperture photometry" to measure the light from each star.

                                             Michael Richmond