Massive Variability Search and Monitoring by OGLE and ASAS

Abstract

OGLE and ASAS are long term observing projects operated by the Warsaw University Observatory at the Las Campanas site in Chile. OGLE is currently monitoring almost 200 million stars in the Galactic Bulge and the Magellanic Clouds, and has detected so far almost 1,000 events of gravitational microlensing with the dedicated 1.3-meter telescope. ASAS uses several very small instruments to monitor all southern sky for variability down to approximately 14 magnitude. A total of almost 300 thousand variable stars were discovered so far by the two projects, and all photometric data is available on the WWW. Both projects aim at real time recognition and verification of all new phenomena in the sky. OGLE is likely to discover planets by 2003 and stellar mass black holes by 2004-2005. All OGLE and ASAS data is made public domain as soon as possible, and may be used by a Virtual Observatory.