Abstract
In the era of multi-messenger astronomy the exploration of the early emission from transients is key for understanding the encoded physics. At the same time, current generation networks of fully-robotic telescopes provide new opportunities in terms of fast followup and sky coverage. This work describes our pipeline designed for robotic optical followup of gamma-ray bursts with the Las Cumbrés Observatory network. We designed a Python code to promptly submit observation requests to the Las Cumbrés Observatory network within 3 minutes of the receipt of the socket notice. Via Telegram the pipeline keeps the users informed, allowing them to take control upon request. Our group was able to track the early phases of the evolution of the optical output from gamma-ray bursts with a fully-robotic procedure and here we report the case of GRB180720B as an example. The developed pipeline represents a key ingredient for any reliable and rapid (minutes timescale) robotic telescope system. While successfully utilized and adapted for LCO, it can also be adapted to any other robotic facilities.
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Notes
Faulkes Telescope South (FTS)
Faulkes Telescope North (FTN)
https://weather.lco.global/#/bpl (weather) https://lco.global/observatory/status/(instruments status)
The system of Notices and Circulars is described at https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov
Examples are available at https://developers.lco.global/?python#telescope-states.
Some templates are available: https://developers.lco.global/?python#proposals.
Please note that we used a slightly different procedure in this case, being in a first testing phase. The main differences where:
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we used a 7-minutes waiting time for the UVOT counterpart;
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we submitted a slightly different “blind” observation request, composed by 5 exposure of 120s in the i’ filter.
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The pipeline flagged the burst as promptly visible from Haleakala, but a few minutes later the burst became observable from Siding Spring, too. According to internal rules, the scheduler finally decided to convey our observation request towards Siding Spring, that finally performed the observation.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Leo Singer for his help and support in the developing of the code. Support for this work was provided by Università di Ferrara through grant FIR 2018 “A Broad-band study of Cosmic Gamma-Ray Burst Prompt and Afterglow Emission” (PI Guidorzi).
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Martone, R., Guidorzi, C., Mundell, C.G. et al. A robotic pipeline for fast GRB followup with the Las Cumbrés observatory network. Exp Astron 48, 25–48 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-019-09634-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-019-09634-y