Heath Davis

GAMMA-RAY BURST AT THE EXTREME: “THE NAKED-EYE BURST” GRB 080319B

On 2008 March 19, the northern sky was the stage of a spectacular optical transient that for a few seconds remained visible to the naked eye. The transient was associated with GRB 080319B, a gamma-ray burst (GRB) at a luminosity distance of about 6 Gpc (standard cosmology), making it the most luminous optical object ever recorded by humankind. We present comprehensive sky monitoring and multicolor optical follow-up observations of GRB 080319B collected by the RAPTOR telescope network covering the development of the explosion and the afterglow before, during, and after the burst. The extremely bright prompt optical emission revealed features that are normally not detectable. The optical and gamma-ray variability during the explosion are correlated, but the optical flux is much greater than can be reconciled with single-emission mechanism and a flat gamma-ray spectrum. This extreme optical behavior is best understood as synchrotron self-Compton model (SSC). After a gradual onset of the gamma-ray emission, there is an abrupt rise of the prompt optical flux, suggesting that variable self-absorption dominates the early optical light curve. Our simultaneous multicolor optical light curves following the flash show spectral evolution consistent with a rapidly decaying red component due to large-angle emission and the emergence of a blue forward-shock component from interaction with the surrounding environment. While providing little support for the reverse shock that dominates the early afterglow, these observations strengthen the case for the universal role of the SSC mechanism in generating GRBs.

TALON: the telescope alert operation network system: intelligent linking of distributed autonomous robotic telescopes

The internet has brought about great change in the astronomical community, but this interconnectivity is just starting to be exploited for use in instrumentation. Utilizing the internet for communicating between distributed astronomical systems is still in its infancy, but it already shows great potential. Here we present an example of a distributed network of telescopes that performs more efficiently in synchronous operation than as individual instruments. RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) is a system of telescopes at LANL that has intelligent intercommunication, combined with wide-field optics, temporal monitoring software, and deep-field follow-up capability all working in closed-loop real-time operation. The Telescope ALert Operations Network (TALON) is a network server that allows intercommunication of alert triggers from external and internal resources and controls the distribution of these to each of the telescopes on the network. TALON is designed to grow, allowing any number of telescopes to be linked together and communicate. Coupled with an intelligent alert client at each telescope, it can analyze and respond to each distributed TALON alert based on the telescopes needs and schedule.

A portable observatory for persistent monitoring of the night sky

We describe the design and operation of a small, transportable, robotic observatory that has been developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This small observatory, called RQD2 (Raptor-Q Design 2), is the prototype for nodes in a global network capable of continuous persistent monitoring of the night sky. The observatory employs five wide-field imagers that altogether view about 90% of the sky above 12 degrees elevation with a sensitivity of R=10 magnitude in 10 seconds. Operating robotically, the RQD2 system acquires a nearly full-sky image every 20 seconds, taking more than 10,000 individual images per night. It also runs real-time astrometric and photometric pipelines that provide both a capability to autonomously search for bright astronomical transients and monitor the variability of optical extinction across the full sky. The first RQD2 observatory began operation in March 2009 and is currently operating at the Fenton Hill site located near Los Alamos, NM.We present a detailed description of the RQD2 system and the data taken during the first several months of operation.

Mining the Sky for Explosive Optical Transients with Both Eyes Open

While it has been known for centuries that the optical sky is variable, monitoring the sky for optical transients with durations as short as a minute is an area of astronomical research that remains largely unexplored. Prompt follow‐up observations of Gamma Ray Bursts have shown that bright, explosive, optical transients exist. However, there are many reasons to suspect the existence of explosive optical transients that cannot be located through sky monitoring by high‐energy satellites. The RAPTOR sky monitoring system is an autonomous system of telescope arrays at Los Alamos National Laboratory that identifies fast optical transients as short as a minute and makes follow‐up observations in real time. The core of the RAPTOR system is composed of two arrays of telescopes, separated by 38 kilometers, that stereoscopically monitor a field of about 1300 square degrees for transients down to about 12.5th magnitude in 30 seconds. Both arrays are coupled to real‐time data analysis pipelines that are designed to ...