Long Term Monitoring

Cygnus A - Radio image

Courtsey of Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories

Many objects in the sky, from stars to the most distant and powerful galaxies, vary on many time scales, from less than a second to many years or longer.

This variability is often not understood. (For example, jets in distant galaxies, like the one in this computer processed radio image, vary almost at random). Again, the flexibility of robotic telescopes will let astronomers to study such objects on all time scales.