Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2002-09-23
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
To appear in SPIE proceedings vol. 4845
Scientific paper
The Rapid Telescope for Optical Response (RAPTOR) program consists of a network of robotic telescopes dedicated to the search for fast optical transients. The pilot project is composed of three observatories separated by approximately 38 kilometers located near Los Alamos, New Mexico. Each of these observatories is composed of a telescope, mount, enclosure, and weather station, all operating robotically to perform individual or coordinated transient searches. The telescopes employ rapidly slewing mounts capable of slewing a 250 pound load 180 degrees in under 2 seconds with arcsecond precision. Each telescope consists of wide-field cameras for transient detection and a narrow-field camera with greater resolution and sensitivity. The telescopes work together by employing a closed-loop system for transient detection and follow-up. Using the combined data from simultaneous observations, transient alerts are generated and distributed via the Internet. Each RAPTOR telescope also has the capability of rapidly responding to external transient alerts received over the Internet from a variety of ground-based and satellite sources. Each observatory may be controlled directly, remotely, or robotically while providing state-of-health and observational results to the client and the other RAPTOR observatories. We discuss the design and implementation of the spatially distributed RAPTOR system.
Borozdin Konstantin
Brumby Steven
Casperson Don
Galassi Mark
McGowan Katherine
No associations
LandOfFree
A Distributed Control System for Rapid Astronomical Transient Detection does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with A Distributed Control System for Rapid Astronomical Transient Detection, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and A Distributed Control System for Rapid Astronomical Transient Detection will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-576411