Searching for optical transients in real-time : the RAPTOR experiment /.

Conference · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1579428· OSTI ID:975969

Vestrand, W T ^[1]; Borozdin, K N ^[2]; Brumby, Steven P; Casperson, D E ^[3]; Fenimore, Edward E; Galassi, M C ^[4]; Gisler, Galen R; McGowan, K E ^[5]; Perkins, S J ^[6]; Priedhorsky, W C ^[7]; Starr, D L ^[8]; White, R A ^[9]; Wozniak, Przemyslaw; Wren, J ^[10]

---

1. W. Thomas
2. Konstantin N.
3. Donald E.
4. Mark C.
5. Katherine E.
6. Simon J.
7. William C.
8. Dan L.
9. Robert A.
10. James

A rich, but relatively unexplored, region in optical astronomy is the study of transients with durations of less than a day. We describe a wide-field optical monitoring system, RAPTOR, which is designed to identify and make follow-up observations of optical transients in real-time. The system is composed of an array of telescopes that continuously monitor about 1500 square degrees of the sky for transients down to about 12' magnitude in 60 seconds and a central fovea telescope that can reach 16{approx}m' agnitude in 60 seconds. Coupled to the telescope array is a real-time data analysis pipeline that is designed to identify transients on timescales of seconds. In a manner analogous to human vision, the entire array is mounted on a rapidly slewing robotic mount so that the fovea of the array can be rapidly directed at transients identified by the wide-field system. The goal of the project is to develop a ground-based optical system that can reliably identify transients in real-time and ultimately generate alerts with source locations to enable follow-up observations wilh other, larger, telescopes.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• OSTI ID: 975969
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-02-0369; LA-UR-02-369; TRN: US201018%%1054
• Resource Relation: Journal Volume: 662; Conference: Submitted to: Woods Hole Gamma-Ray Burst Meeting
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ASTRONOMY
DATA ANALYSIS
MONITORING
MONITORS
OPTICAL SYSTEMS
PIPELINES
SKY
TELESCOPES
TRANSIENTS
VISION