A very interesting concept whose maturity is being raised. There are many sky surveys (some originally intended for NEO searches) that have been opportunistical

A very interesting concept whose maturity is being raised. There are many sky surveys (some originally intended for NEO searches) that have been opportunistically mined for novel transients. It turns out that if you look, there is a lot going on out there: stellar flares, supernovae, blazars, gamma-ray bursts, occlusions -- as the article points out. Here's links to the tech summary, and the overview paper, which reviews work presented at the just-concluded SPIE conference: https://evryscope.astro.unc.edu/the-argus-array/ https://evryscope.astro.unc.edu/the-argus-array/ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.14318.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.14318.pdf The array (both prototype and projected final) is made from ~20cm telescopes. Such a telescope can't see very deep, so they are relying on co-adding across various temporal windows, up to 5 nights, to get to targets down to M = 23.6. Controlling the systematic effects (temperature, structural geometry, optical path) for a ground-based telescope across these time scales and equipment differences will be a challenge. One very large facility (like this one, not yet built) in this space is Vera Rubin Observatory (https://www.lsst.org/about https://www.lsst.org/about, formerly LSST). Rubin has much more glass, so it will see deeper, but its revisit time seems to be less frequent (once every 3 days), and it may not offer the real-time mode that this concept does. A final observation: The funding for this concept comes from an NSF mid-scale innovations program (MSIP, https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/mid-scale-innovations-program-astronomical-sciences-msip https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/mid-scale-innovat...). MSIP supports up to $30M-cost projects. This is the same order of magnitude as support for renovating Arecibo was expected to cost, before that telescope failed. (https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-relieved-us-funding-agency-moves-keep-arecibo-telescope-operating https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-relieved... -- it appears the failure could have been avoided with better monitoring.) I'm just noting that to fund new stuff like this, the NSF does have to progressively retreat from older observatories.