AIP Conf.Proc. 662 (2003) 514-516 We report on the current operating status of the ROTSE-IIIa telescope,
currently undergoing testing at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico.
It will be ...shipped to Siding Spring Observatory, Australia, in first quarter
2002. ROTSE-IIIa has been in automated observing mode since early October,
2001, after completing several weeks of calibration and check-out observations.
Calibrated lists of objects in ROTSE-IIIa sky patrol data are produced
routinely in an automated pipeline, and we are currently automating analysis
procedures to compile these lists, eliminate false detections, and
automatically identify transient and variable objects. The manual application
of these procedures has already led to the detection of a nova that rose over
six magnitudes in two days to a maximum detected brightness of m_R~13.9 and
then faded two magnitudes in two weeks. We also readily identify variable
stars, includings those suspected to be variables from the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey. We report on our system to allow public monitoring of the telescope
operational status in real time over the WWW.
The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB990123 convincingly
demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a
program of rapid follow-up observations of gamma-ray ...bursts, the Robotic
Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next-generation
instrument, ROTSE-III, that will continue the search for fast optical
transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to
be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system
components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount,
enclosure, environmental sensing & protection and data acquisition. Each is
described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful
in similar contexts elsewhere.
The robotic ROTSE-III telescope network detected prompt optical emission contemporaneous with the gamma-ray emission of Swift events GRB051109A and GRB051111. Both datasets have continuous coverage ...at high signal-to-noise levels from the prompt phase onwards, thus the early observations are readily compared to the Swift XRT and BAT high energy detections. In both cases, the optical afterglow is established, declining steadily during the prompt emission. For GRB051111, there is evidence of an excess optical component during the prompt emission. The component is consistent with the flux spectrally extrapolated from the gamma-rays, using the gamma-ray spectral index. A compilation of spectral information from previous prompt detections shows that such a component is unusual. The existence of two prompt optical components - one connected to the high-energy emission, the other to separate afterglow flux, as indicated in GRB051111 - is not compatible with a simple ``external-external'' shock model for the GRB and its afterglow.
We report on the current operating status of the ROTSE-IIIa telescope, currently undergoing testing at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. It will be shipped to Siding Spring Observatory, ...Australia, in first quarter 2002. ROTSE-IIIa has been in automated observing mode since early October, 2001, after completing several weeks of calibration and check-out observations. Calibrated lists of objects in ROTSE-IIIa sky patrol data are produced routinely in an automated pipeline, and we are currently automating analysis procedures to compile these lists, eliminate false detections, and automatically identify transient and variable objects. The manual application of these procedures has already led to the detection of a nova that rose over six magnitudes in two days to a maximum detected brightness of m_R~13.9 and then faded two magnitudes in two weeks. We also readily identify variable stars, includings those suspected to be variables from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We report on our system to allow public monitoring of the telescope operational status in real time over the WWW.
The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB990123 convincingly demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a program of rapid follow-up observations of gamma-ray ...bursts, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next-generation instrument, ROTSE-III, that will continue the search for fast optical transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount, enclosure, environmental sensing & protection and data acquisition. Each is described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful in similar contexts elsewhere.
Committee Reports Cartwright, C. M.; Cleland, Ethel; Gilchrist, Donald B. ...
Bulletin of the American Library Association,
04/1932, Letnik:
26, Številka:
4
Journal Article
