Ultrasat

ULTRASAT is a scientific mini-satellite carrying a telescope with an unprecedentedly large field of view (210 squared degrees) observing in the ultraviolet (UV, 220-280nm), that is proposed by an Israeli/US collaboration to be constructed and launched to a (near) geostationary orbit by 2022.

ULTRASAT will revolutionize our ability to measure, analyze and understand the most energetic dynamic phenomena in the universe. These include the mergers of neutron stars to black holes accompanied by the emission of gravitational waves and of highly radioactive material, the explosive deaths of massive stars, the disruption of stars by super massive black holes, and much more. ULTRASAT will enable this revolution by providing the first wide-field time-domain UV survey, exploring a new parameter space in wavelength and time-scale (minutes to months stares), with a discovery rate >300 times larger than ever before. It will provide continuous NUV light curves to depths comparable to contemporary ground and space-based time-domain surveys at longer wavelengths (e.g. LSST).

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Xenon

XENON is a direct dark matter detection experiment located at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy. Our goal is to detect dark matter particles by identifying their very rare interactions with ordinary matter where minute amounts of charge and light are created.

The first module, XENON10,  was successfully operated until 2007, leading to some of the best limits on dark matter at that time.

The data from second module, XENON100, went on to be the best limits on dark matter then.  We are now concluding the current effort with a target mass of 1 ton, XENON1T, and preparing for a quick upgrade to enhance yet another order of magnitude in sensitivity with the XENONnT experiment, scheduled to start operating in 2019.

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W-FAST

Two 57-cm f/2 Schmidt telescopes to be located in Mizpe-Ramon, Israel. The telescopes were designed and are being constructed in the Weizmann Institute. W-FAST will explore the dynamic sky on short time scales and it will look for the Oort cloud.

Computational resources

The astrophysics computational cluster includes 2072 HP cores (2.6 GHz with 6.8GB memory per core), connected with FDR InfiniBand in a fat tree topology, embedded within the Weizmann EXAscale Cluster (WEXAC). This machine allows the astrophysics group to perform large-scale computational tasks.

Kraar observatory

A small 40cm telescope in the campus that is being used mainly for equipment tests and education.

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