MANIA

MANIA - Multichannel Analysis of Nanosecond Intensity Alterations.

Contact Astronomer - V.L.Plokhotnichenko pvl@sao.ru

The hard--and--software system MANIA is designed to search for and study optical emission variations of astrophysical objects on time scales from 0.1 mks to 100 s. The technique is intended for registering the time of arrival of each photon.

The system includes the time--code converter ``QUANTOCHRON 3/16'' on line with the computer PC AT Pentium 200 MMX. A 2--channel photometer placed at Nasmyth-1, or a 4--channel prime focus photometer is used as the detector.

Characteristics of the system:

• the accuracy of recording the moments of arrival of photons is 20 ns;
• the apparatus dead-time is 100 ns;
• the limiting intensity of the flux recorded is 370000 quanta/s.

Information on the moments of detection of photons is recorded as magnetic disk files stored on DAT magnetic tapes, copied to CD disks. Data acquisition and processing are performed under OS Linux. A remote observer mode of operation via the net is provided for.

The accumulated data are processed with the software developed at the SAO and meant, first of all, to search for stochastic variability and investigation of periodical intensity variations. We are able to recognize intensity variations of an 18 -- 19m object on a time scales of 10 -- 100mks, provided the power of the variable component is about 40%.

The system can be used for data acquisition from any detector producing standard output TTL pulses when detecting each photon. In particular, a coordinate-sensitive photon counter can serve as the detector.