Whole Earth Telescope

[2] This concept was devised by American astronomers R. Edward Nather and Don E. Winget of the University of Texas at Austin.

[4] The consortium consists of individual astronomers interested in collaborating to study targets designated by a principal investigator.

[6] For each site, an observing run begins when the sky is dark, and continues until stopped by weather or dawn.

Each site in turn takes up an overlapping observation run, so the result is, ideally, a continuous sequence of data that can then be processed.

[7] After constructing a light curve, the data is subject to a Fourier transform to obtain the frequencies of pulsation.

[12] The observations of PG 1159-035 with the WET, reported in 1991, initiated the study of white dwarf seismology,[13] later termed asteroseismology.

[4] The ability to collect photometric data over a long period is vulnerable to weather conditions, the need to allocate time for each telescope, and the situation of each participating astronomer.