2006PASP..118.1621P

The All Sky Automated Survey is monitoring the entire sky to about 14 mag with a cadence of about 1 day; it has discovered about 10⁵ variable stars, most of them new. The instrument used for the survey had an aperture of 7 cm. A search for planetary transits has led to the discovery of about a dozen confirmed planets, so-called hot Jupiters, providing information on planetary masses and radii. Most discoveries were done with telescopes with apertures of 10 cm. We propose a search for optical transients covering the entire sky with a cadence of 10-30 minutes and a limit of 12-14 mag, with an instant verification of all candidate events. The search will be made with a large number of 10 cm instruments, and the verification will be done with 30 cm instruments. We also propose a system to be located at the L1 point of the Earth-Sun system to detect ``killer asteroids.'' With a limiting magnitude of about 18 mag, it could detect 10 m boulders several hours prior to their impact and provide warning against Tunguska-like events, as well as provide news about spectacular but more modest, harmless impacts.