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Tomo-e Gozen (Tomo-e) is a wide field optical camera for the Kiso 1.05 m f/3.1 Schmidt telescope operated by the University of Tokyo. Tomo-e is equipped with 84 chips of front-illuminated CMOS image sensors with a microlens array. The field of view is about 20 square degrees and maximum frame rate is 2 fps. The CMOS sensor has 2160x1200 pixels and a size of pixel is 19 microns, which is larger than those of other CMOS sensors. We have evaluated performances of the CMOS sensors installed in Tomo-e. The readout noise is 2.0 e- in 2 fps operations when an internal amplifier gain is set to 16. The dark current is 0.5 e-/sec/pix at room temperature, 290K, which is lower than a typical sky background flux in Tomo-e observations, 50 e-/sec/pix. The efficiency of the camera system peaks at approximately 0.7 in 500 nm.

The Tomo-e Gozen is a wide-field high-speed camera for the Kiso 1.0-m Schmidt telescope, with a field-of-view of 20.7-deg2 covered by 84 chips of 2k x 1k CMOS image sensors with 19-μm pixels. It is capable to take consecutive images at 2-fps in full-frame read with an absolute time accuracy of 0.2 millisecond. The sensors are operated without mechanical coolers owing to a low dark current at room temperature. A low read noise of 2-e- achieves higher sensitivity than that with a CCD sensor in short exposures. Big data of 30-TBytes per night produced in the 2-fps observations is processed in real-time to quickly detect transient events and issue alerts for follow-ups.

A conceptual design of a wide-field near UV transient survey in a 6U CubeSat is presented. Ultraviolet is one of the frontier in the transient astronomy. To open up the discovery region, we are developing a 6U CubeSat for transient exploration. The possible targets will be supernova shock-breakouts, tidal disruption events, and the blue emission from NS-NS mergers in very early phase. If we only focused on nearby/bright sources, the required detection limit is around 20 mag (AB). To avoid the background and optical light, we chose a waveband of 230-280 nm. As an imaging detector, we employ a delta-doped back-illuminated CMOS. In addition to delta doping, the multi-layer coating directly deposited on the detector enables both a high in-band UV QE and the ultra-low optical rejection ratio. Taking into account these specifications, even an 8 cm telescope can achieve the detection limit of 20 magAB. The expected FoV is larger than 60 deg^2 .

The Tomo-e Gozen is an extremely wide-field optical camera for the Kiso 1.0-m Schmidt telescope. It is capable of taking consecutive frames with a field-of-view of 20 deg2 and a sub-second time-resolution, which are achieved by 84 chips of 2k×1k CMOS sensor. This camera adopts unconventional designs including a lightweight structure, a nonvacuumed and naturally-air cooled system, front-side-illuminated CMOS sensors with microlens arrays, a sensor alignment along a spherical focal plane of the telescope, and massive readout electronics. To develop technical components necessary for the Tomo-e Gozen and confirm a feasibility of its basic design, we have developed a prototype-model (PM) of the Tomo-e Gozen prior to the final-model (FM). The Tomo-e PM is equipped with eight chips of the CMOS sensor arranged in a line along the RA direction, covering a sky area of 2.0 deg2. The maximum frame rate is 2 fps. The total data production rate is 80 MByte sec-1 at 2 fps, corresponding to approximately 3 TByte night-1. After laboratory testing, we have successfully obtained consecutive movie data at 2 fps with the Tomo-e PM in the first commissioning run conducted in the end of 2015.

The Tomo-e Gozen camera is a next-generation, extremely wide field optical camera, equipped with 84 CMOS sensors. The camera records about a 20 square degree area at 2 Hz, providing “astronomical movie data”. We have developed a prototype of the Tomo-e Gozen camera (hereafter, Tomo-e PM), to evaluate the basic design of the Tomo-e Gozen camera. Tomo-e PM, equipped with 8 CMOS sensors, can capture a 2 square degree area at up to 2 Hz. Each CMOS sensor has about 2.6 M pixels. The data rate of Tomo-e PM is about 80 MB/s, corresponding to about 280 GB/hour. We have developed an operating system and reduction softwares to handle such a large amount of data. Tomo-e PM was mounted on 1.0-m Schmidt Telescope in Kiso Observatory at the University of Tokyo. Experimental observations were carried out in the winter of 2015 and the spring of 2016. The observations and software implementation were successfully completed. The data reduction is now in execution.