Abstract:
The Pesit/IIA Observatory for the Night Sky(PIONS) is a near UV imaging telescope to be flown on a small
satellite. The instrument is a 150mm RC telescope that covers a wavelength range of 180-280 nm. We are using
an intensified CMOS detector with a solar blind photocathode, to be operated in photon counting mode. The
telescope has a wide field of view of 3 degrees and an angular resolution of 13”. We plan to point the telescope to
scan the sky continuously along the sun pointing axis to look for variable UV sources such as flare stars, AGNs,
and other transient events. We can detect objects as faint as 21 magnitude and perform their photometric
analysis. Since the aperture and the effective area of the telescope are comparatively small, it can be pointed to
relatively brighter parts of the UV sky which were not accessible to larger mission due to detector limitations.
