ROBONET - A GLOBAL NETWORK OF 2-METRE ROBOTIC TELESCOPES
							20 Feb 1999
Dear Colleagues,

The UK Government and Wellcome Trust have jointly decided to update the
infrastructure for research at UK Universities by establishing a 
600 million pound Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) that will be allocated
at 6-month intervals over the next two years.   Half is earmarked for
bio-medical research.  An educated guess suggests that something like
30 to 50 million might go to Astronomy.   Decisions on the first round
of proposals will be announced in April 1999.

We have proposed for 19 million pounds to build ROBONET,
a global network of six 2m Robotic Telescopes designed for astrophysics
experiments exploiting multi-wavelength time variability.  ROBONET has
3 northern and 3 southern telescopes at widely spaced longitudes to enable
continuous observations and rapid responses to targets of opportunity
anywhere on the sky at any time. ROBONET is intended as a backbone onto
which other groups may graft their own robotic telescopes -- thereby
gaining access to a share of time on the global network.

The ROBONET instruments, identical on all 6 telescopes, include
	a 4-colour simultaneous broadband imager,
	a fibre-fed medium-resolution optical spectrograph.
The imager covers a 5 arcminute field (sufficient for prime target plus
comparison stars) simultaneously in four optical/infrared bands
( UB, VR, IZ, JH ) with time resolutions down to less than a second.
The medium-resolution (1A) optical spectrograph is fed by
a 100-fibre integral field unit sampling a 10-arcsec field
(sufficient for target plus sky background) and mounted alongside
the imager (for simultaneous comparison stars).
These arrangements enable absolute spectrophotometry to be obtained
even through thin clouds.

We believe that ROBONET will be revolutionary in many areas: 
	microlens monitoring -- discovery of exo-Jupiters and Earths
	supernova lightcurves -- cosmological parameters
	gamma-ray bursts -- photometry/spectra within 1 minute
	lensed quasars -- time delays, quasar disk mapping
	dwarf novae outbursts -- test accretion disk instability theory
	black hole binaries -- physics of accretion onto black holes
	blazars -- physics of relativistic jets
	AGN variability -- reverberation mapping of T(R) in AGN disks,
			black hole masses, measure H0, q0.
	protostars -- periods and variability studies in large samples
	stellar seismology -- continuous observations, mode identification
	variable stars -- routine long-term spectroscopic monitoring
	space astrophysics  -- routine optical coverage simultaneous
		with X-ray and UV satellite observations.

For more information, please examine our proposal on the web at
	http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~kdh1/jifpage.html
Comments/collaboration welcome.

We need your help to show that ROBONET will have a major impact on
astrophysics worldwide.  If you would like to see the UK invest in
ROBONET, please write a brief letter of support to :
	Prof. Ian Halliday, PPARC, Polaris House, North Star Ave
	Swindon, Wiltshire, SN2 1SZ, United Kingdom
Include a copy for Prof. Sir Arnold Wolfendale, who chairs the panel
that will prioritize the astronomy bids on 11 March.  Competing
astronomy bids are (1) 35% share of 10m telescope in Canary Islands
(2) 4m wide-field survey telescope in Chile.  If you send me a copy for
information, that will be much appreciated.   Please feel free to forward
this open letter to any colleagues who may be interested.

	Best wishes,

	Keith Horne
	Physics & Astronomy, North Haugh
	St.Andrews, KY16 9SS, Scotland, UK