Motivation
Since it is not possible to predict when a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) occurs, the follow-up ground telescopes must be distributed as uniform as possible all over the world in order to collect simultaneous data with the Swift detections. Based on the three-year operations of Swift, however, we noticed the distinct gap in follow-up coverage in the eastern U.S. region (Figure 1). This fact motivated us to construct a fully automated optical telescope here at GSFC.
Figure 1: The location of the ground telescopes used for the GRB follow-up between September 2006 to March 2007. Different colors correspond to a different size of the aperture of the telescope.
Equipments
- Celestron 14" Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA)
- Astro-Phyics 1200GTO German-type equatorial mount
- JMI Electronical focuser (EV2CM and PCFC)
- Finger Lake Instrumentation Color filter wheel (CFW-1-8) and filters (UVBRI)
- Apogee U47 CCD camera
- Astro-Haven 7ft dome
- Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 Weather Station
- Logitec QuickCam Chat (x3)
Softwares
- MaxImDL -> ACP
Telescope Site
- Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory (GGAO) (latitude:39.0 deg, longtude:-76.9 deg)
Team Members
- T. Sakamoto (PI)
- N. Gehrels
- D. Donato
- T. Okajima
- T. N. Ukwatta
- Y. Urata
- C. A. Wallace
- Responsible NASA Official : Ryan Smallcomb
- Web Curator: J.D. Myers
- A service of the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/GSFC