Goddard Robotic Telescope - Optical Follow-up of GRBs and Coordinated Observations of AGNs -

Details Goddard Robotic Telescope - Optical Follow-up of GRBs and Coordinated Observations of AGNs - Goddard Robotic Telescope - Optical Follow-up of GRBs and Coordinated Observations of AGNs -

2010-11-05

arxiv.org/abs/1011.1300v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

14 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in ASR special issue on Neutron Stars and Gamma Ray Bursts

Scientific paper

Since it is not possible to predict when a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) will occur or when Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) flaring activity starts, follow-up/monitoring ground telescopes must be located as uniformly as possible all over the world in order to collect data simultaneously with Fermi and Swift detections. However, there is a distinct gap in follow-up coverage of telescopes in the eastern U.S. region based on the operations of Swift. Motivated by this fact, we have constructed a 14" fully automated optical robotic telescope, Goddard Robotic Telescope (GRT), at the Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory. The aims of our robotic telescope are 1) to follow-up Swift/Fermi GRBs and 2) to perform the coordinated optical observations of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) AGN. Our telescope system consists of off-the-shelf hardware. With the focal reducer, we are able to match the field of view of Swift narrow instruments (20' x 20'). We started scientific observations in mid-November 2008 and GRT has been fully remotely operated since August 2009. The 3 sigma upper limit in a 30-second exposure in the R filter is ~15.4 mag; however, we can reach to ~18 mag in a 600-second exposures. Due to the weather condition at the telescope site, our observing efficiency is 30-40% on average.

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