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A diagram showing how the eSTAR network operates. The Intelligent Agents access telescopes and existing astronomical databases through the Grid. CREDIT: Joint Astronomy Centre. Eta Carinae image courtesy of N. Smith (U. Colorado), J. Morse (Arizona State U.), and NASA.

A screenshot of the VOEvent live-feed KML network link open inside Google Sky.

The eSTAR Project is a programme to build an intelligent robotic telescope network. It is a joint project between the Astrophysics Research Institute at Liverpool John Moores University and the Astrophysics Research Group of the School of Physics at the University of Exeter.

In collaboration with the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii, and the Robonet-1.0 Project in the United Kingdom, the system is now operational performing rapid followup of Gamma-Ray Bursts on the 3.8m United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Mauna Kea, and hunting for exo-planets using the Liverpool Telescope (LT) in La Palma, the Faulkes Telescope North (FTN) on Maui and the Faulkes Telescope South (FTS) in Siding Spring.

This is an exciting time for the project as we are now routinely doing real science on research class telescopes, and heavily involved in a number of different collaborations, including the HTN and IVOA.

Members of the press looking for information about the eSTAR project should go to our media centre for recent press releases and a list of media contacts

Our twitter feed for a real-time event messages

The current network status information
KML network link for a real-time VOEvent feed
VOEvent feed (including OGLE translation)
Feed of recent changes to the web site