PROMPT: Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes

Reichart, D. and Nysewander, M. and Moran, J. and Bartelme, J. and Bayliss, M. and Foster, A. and Clemens, J. C. and Price, P. and Evans, C. and Salmonson, J. and Trammell, S. and Carney, B. and Keohane, J. and Gotwals, R. (2005) PROMPT: Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes. Il nuovo cimento C, 28 (4\5). pp. 767-770. ISSN 1826-9885

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Abstract

Funded by $1.2M in grants and donations, we are now building PROMPT at CTIO. When completed in late 2005, PROMPT will consist of six 0.41-meter diameter Ritchey-Chrétien telescopes on rapidly slewing mounts that respond to GRB alerts within seconds, when the afterglow is potentially extremely bright. Each mirror and camera coating is being optimized for a different wavelength range and function, including a NIR imager, two red-optimized imagers, a blue-optimized imager, an UV-optimized imager, and an optical polarimeter. PROMPT will be able to identify high-redshift events by dropout and distinguish these events from the similar signatures of extinction. In this way, PROMPT will act as a distance-finder scope for spectroscopic follow up on the larger 4.1-meter diameter SOAR telescope, which is also located at CTIO. When not chasing GRBs, PROMPT serves broader educational objectives across the state of North Carolina. Enclosure construction and the first two telescopes are now complete and functioning: PROMPT observed Swift’s first GRB in December 2004. We upgrade from two to four telescope in February 2005 and from four to six telescopes in mid-2005.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Paper presented at the “4th Workshop on Gamma-Ray Burst in the Afterglow Era”, Rome, October 18-22, 2004.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Ground-based ultraviolet, optical and infrared telescopes ; Polarimetry ; Remote observing techniques ; γ-ray sources; γ-ray bursts ; Observational cosmology (including Hubble constant, distance scale, cosmological constant, early Universe, etc.)
Subjects: 500 Scienze naturali e Matematica > 520 Astronomia e scienze connesse
Depositing User: Marina Spanti
Date Deposited: 17 Mar 2020 16:15
Last Modified: 17 Mar 2020 16:15
URI: http://eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it/id/eprint/15941

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