SAINT: a Wide-Field Multichannel Optical Telescope Project

Here we present the project of a Small Aperture Imaging Network Telescope (SAINT), which consists of 500 small telescopes - channels - with 1 sq.deg. fields of view each. The telescope operates either in wide-field monitoring mode, covering 500 square degrees of the sky simultaneously with 0.1 s temporal resolution and detection limit of about 22-23 mag in 1000 s, or in follow-up regime, upon detection of a transient. In the latter case, all the channels immediately repoint towards the transient for its detailed (multicolor, polarimetric, spectroscopic) investigation. In this regime, SAINT is equivalent to 8-m telescope and may be used to solve most of standard astro-physical problems.