The KMTNet AEON is available as the KASI’s contribution to the LSST for the US community. In this page you can find information about the KMTNet, the AEON time, and its API. This page has been updated for the 2026B semester from August 2026 to January 2027. When you have questions, please, contact Dr. Min-Su Shin at the KASI.
The KMTNet is made of three identical 1.6m telescopes with an four 9Kx9K CCD mosaic camera with a 2x2 square degree field of view (i.e., the pixel-scale 0.4 arcsec/pixel) in three observatories of CTIO, SSO, and SAAO. The available filters are Johnson-Cousins B, V, R, and I-bands as well as LSST g, r, and i-bands in the three sites although the available filters depend on observation seasons. The average overhead time between exposures is 90 seconds. A simple scripted observational mode is available by local operators. The essential information for scripting observation is the object name, RA, DEC, Filter name, and exposure time. Check Kim et al. (2016) and KMTNet website for further information.
The KMTNet AEON time will be contributed to the active and immediate follow-up of the LSST objects with the AEON mode support in two ways. First, either beginning or ending 30 minutes of night at all three sites will be available whenever observation conditions meet the KMTNet’s operation requirements. The LSST science community will be able to conduct critical follow-up observations in a timely manner because at least one site will be available to observe a requested target generally within 8 hours everyday. The regular temporal monitoring of a large Rubin field will be also feasible. Available filters and assignment between beginning and ending of the night will be completely determined by the KMTNet’s own operation. In general, the evening time will be allocated for the 30-minutes AEON time block from January to June, and the morning time will be available for the KMTNet AEON from July to December. Second, the full AEON mode will be made available for pre-allocated nights equally distributed over lunar phases. If the active follow-up community demands intensive continuous monitoring of a large field, they will benefit from this adoption of AEON mode. The assignment of the full AEON mode nights will depend on the KMTNet’s operation schedules and constraints.
The total KMTNet time to be contributed in the two AEON modes will be 300 hours per site per year (i.e., 150 hours per site per semester). We do not consider any pre-fixed portion between two AEON modes to ensure KMTNet’s scheduling flexibility. However, we presume that the AEON mode in the pre-allocated nights is about 150 hours per site every year, considering the typical number of observable nights and the usage of 30 minutes in either evening or morning everyday. All KMTNet operations are executed by the operators at all three sites.
We expect the telescope operators to execute the requested AEON queue observations. The AEON queue is automatically generated by considering observation requests submitted by the granted researchers via the KMTNet AEON API. The submission of observation requests for a specific AEON time block will be closed 30 minutes before the start of the time block. The pre-alllocated AEON nights are divided into two time blocks with respect to the local midnight of each observatory.
The KMTNet has technical constraints such as minimum altitude, and the observability of the submitted observation requests is strongly limited by the restrictions. The KMTNet AEON queue scheduler basically works with its own scheduling rule without considering any priority information. In short, the scheduler checks feasibility of the requested observations for the several constraints, and optimizes the efficiency of the observations.
We will deliver the fully calibrated photometric catalog with aperture photometry measurements as default products for all detected sources as well as model-based photometry such as PSF photometry for a single specific known object/position in a forced photometry way if a user requests. The delivered data products will also include astrometrically-calibrated science images (i.e., images with WCS coordinates) processed by an instrumental signature removal procedure including cross-talk removal, bias subtraction, and flat-fielding, etc. within 24 hours after data acquisition in most cases. The relevant science pipeline will be introduced to the community soon by a journal paper. The science pipeline contains quality check and verification procedures which generate summary statistics and relevant plots to help users figure out reliability of estimated photometric quantities. The KMTNet operation staff obtains calibration data for the instrumental signature removal procedure routinely. Therefore, if the US LSST science community demands, the default calibration data will be delivered in addition to the data products. However, it will be difficult to obtain a specific and custom calibration data.
This research has made use of the KMTNet system operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) at three host sites of CTIO in Chile, SAAO in South Africa, and SSO in Australia. Data transfer from the host site to KASI was supported by the Korea Research Environment Open NETwork. The KMTNet AEON development and operation are part of the KASI project for the LSST science supporting activities by the Korean community.
The KMTNet AEON API can be accessed by the created token following the OpenAPI standard. See the explanation of “Bearer Authentication”. The token is set to expire after 7 days in the current configuration.
You may want to have the KMTNet AEON block 2026B schedule in the format of CSV. The time in the CSV file is given in UTC. FYI, the 2026A schedule is here.
See the API document. You can find some examples of accessing the API in the github repository.