RESEARCH

Swift Burst Alert Telescope Data Pipelines

Credit: Spectrum and NASA E/PO, Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet

The Swift observatory is a one-of-a-kind observatory that allows quick followup of detected Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) in optical and X-ray energies. On board the observatory is the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) which is a coded aperture instrument which detects GRBs and localizes them to a small area of the sky. This allows the spacecraft to change its orientation so the other two instruments, XRT and UVOT, can begin observations of the GRB. As a result of it’s capabilities, this observatory is extremely important in the continual growth of the time-domain and multi-messenger (TDAMM) area of astrophysics.

I am currently a mission operations scientist for the BAT which has allowed me to become very familiar with the various technical aspects of supporting a current NASA mission. My duties includes:

  • Keeping track of the status of BAT and reporting it in Swift daily planning meetings
  • Diagnosing and resolving any instrumental issues that may be occuring with BAT
  • Ensuring that the instrument is calibrated
  • Interfacing with the community to answer BAT related queries
  • Maintaining the Transient Monitor light curve processing pipeline and database located at: https://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/results/transients/

In addition to these tasks (and my MCRaT related research) I have also been leading efforts to:

  • Develop a python pipeline to conveniently analyze BAT survey data to allow this dataset to be used more widely in the astrophysics community
  • Prepare the BAT for the O4 observing run of Gravitational Wave detectors in order to maximize the scientific output of these observations

My role as a mission operations scientist also allows me to gain insight into how typical GRB data is collected and analyzed which places me in a unique position to create realistic mock observations based on my MCRaT simulations, similar to my work related to galaxy formation mock observations.

In future work I plan on conducting forward modeling simulations where I use my MCRaT GRB results as a starting point for injecting photons through the full BAT response. Then the outputs will be analyzed using the same Heasoft BAT tools that are used to process triggered GRB events. This is based on the work that is currently being done with the NITRATES code and will help with TDAMM efforts in future gravitational wave observing runs.
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