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Guidorzi, C, Monfardini, A, Gomboc, A, Mottram, CJ, Mundell, CG, Steele, IA, Carter, D, Bode, MF, Smith, RJ, Fraser, SN, Burgdorf, MJ and Newsam, AM (2006) The Automatic Real-Time GRB Pipeline of the 2-m Liverpool Telescope. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 118 (840). pp. 288-296. ISSN 1538-3873
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Abstract
The 2-m Liverpool Telescope (LT), owned by Liverpool John Moores University, is located in La Palma (Canary Islands) and operates in fully robotic mode. In 2005, the LT began conducting an automatic GRB follow-up program. On receiving an automatic GRB alert from a Gamma-Ray Observatory (Swift, INTEGRAL, HETE-II, IPN) the LT initiates a special override mode that conducts follow-up observations within 2-3 min of the GRB onset. This follow-up procedure begins with an initial sequence of short (10-s) exposures acquired through an r' band filter. These images are reduced, analyzed and interpreted automatically using pipeline software developed by our team called "LT-TRAP" (Liverpool Telescope Transient Rapid Analysis Pipeline); the automatic detection and successful identification of an unknown and potentially fading optical transient triggers a subsequent multi-color imaging sequence. In the case of a candidate brighter than r'=15, either a polarimetric (from 2006) or a spectroscopic observation (from 2007) will be triggered on the LT. If no candidate is identified, the telescope continues to obtain z', r' and i' band imaging with increasingly longer exposure times. Here we present a detailed description of the LT-TRAP and briefly discuss the illustrative case of the afterglow of GRB 050502a, whose automatic identification by the LT just 3 min after the GRB, led to the acquisition of the first early-time (< 1 hr) multi-color light curve of a GRB afterglow.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | astro-ph; astro-ph |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics |
| Divisions: | Astrophysics Research Institute |
| Publisher: | IOP & Astronomical Society of the Pacfic |
| Related URLs: | |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Jan 2017 09:10 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2021 12:05 |
| DOI or ID number: | 10.1086/499289 |
| URI: | https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/5286 |
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