First year of SAINT-EX operations: an exoplanet dedicated 1m telescope at San Pedro Mártir

YILEN GÓMEZ MAQUEO CHEW; BRICE OLIVIER DEMORY; ROMINA PETRUCCI; URS SCHROFFENEGGER; LAURENCE SABIN; MARKO SESTOVIC; SAINT-EX TEAM

Conferencia; Exoplanets III; 2020

We present a summary of the first year of operations with SAINT-EX, a 1m telescope with a deep-depleted and back-illuminated Andor CCD, situated at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional de la Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, in Baja California, México. SAINT-EX is dedicated to the discovery and characterization of transiting exoplanets through the acquisition of precise time-series photometry. Installed in late 2018, SAINT-EX began science observations in March 2019 and had been observing nightly until the world pandemic. Its location (115 W, +31 N) complements facilities with similar capabilities. An automated reduction pipeline (PRINCE) has been developed to process the nightly observations and produce light curves. In collaboration with the SPECULOOS project, we observed 30 ultracool dwarf stars (SpT M8 or later), each between 50 and 80h of time-series observations and have contributed to TESS planet candidate follow-up.