India's first robotic eye for time domain astrophysics: the GROWTH-India telescope
Abstract
We present the design and performance of the GROWTH-India telescope, a 0.7 m robotic telescope dedicated to time-domain astronomy. The telescope is equipped with a 4k back-illuminated camera giving a 0.82-degree field of view and sensitivity of m_g ~20.5 in 5-min exposures. Custom software handles observatory operations: attaining high on-sky observing efficiencies (>~ 80%) and allowing rapid response to targets of opportunity. The data processing pipelines are capable of performing PSF photometry as well as image subtraction for transient searches. We also present an overview of the GROWTH-India telescope's contributions to the studies of Gamma-ray Bursts, the electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources, supernovae, novae and solar system objects.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2206.13535,
title = {India's first robotic eye for time domain astrophysics: the GROWTH-India telescope},
author = {Harsh Kumar and Varun Bhalerao and G. C. Anupama and Sudhanshu Barway and Judhajeet Basu and Kunal Deshmukh and Kishalay De and Anirban Dutta and Christoffer Fremling and Hrishikesh Iyer and Adeem Jassani and Simran Joharle and Viraj Karambelkar and Maitreya Khandagale and K Adithya Krishna and Sumeet Kulkarni and Sujay Mate and Atharva Patil and DVS Phanindra and Subham Samantaray and Kritti Sharma and Yashvi Sharma and Vedant Shenoy and Avinash Singh and Shubham Srivastava and Vishwajeet Swain and Gaurav Waratkar and Dorje Angchuk and Padma Dorjay and Tsewang Dorjai and Tsewang Gyalson and Sonam Jorphail and Tashi Thsering Mahay and Rigzin Norbu and Tarun Kumar Sharma and Jigmet Stanzin and Tsewang Stanzin and Urgain Stanzin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.13535},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
17 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal