The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO)
Abstract
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a project dedicated to identifying optical counter-parts to gravitational-wave detections using a network of dedicated, wide-field telescopes. After almost a decade of design, construction, and commissioning work, the GOTO network is now fully operational with two antipodal sites: La Palma in the Canary Islands and Siding Spring in Australia. Both sites host two independent robotic mounts, each with a field-of-view of 44 square degrees formed by an array of eight 40 cm telescopes, resulting in an instantaneous 88 square degree field-of-view per site. All four telescopes operate as a single integrated network, with the ultimate aim of surveying the entire sky every 2-3 days and allowing near-24-hour response to transient events within a minute of their detection. In the modern era of transient astronomy, automated telescopes like GOTO form a vital link between multi-messenger discovery facilities and in-depth follow-up by larger telescopes. GOTO is already producing a wide range of scientific results, assisted by an efficient discovery pipeline and a successful citizen science project: Kilonova Seekers.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2407.17176,
title = {The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO)},
author = {Martin J. Dyer and Kendall Ackley and Felipe Jiménez-Ibarra and Joseph Lyman and Krzysztof Ulaczyk and Danny Steeghs and Duncan K. Galloway and Vik S. Dhillon and Paul O'Brien and Gavin Ramsay and Kanthanakorn Noysena and Rubina Kotak and Rene Breton and Laura Nuttall and Enric Pallé and Don Pollacco and Tom Killestein and Amit Kumar and David O'Neill and Lisa Kelsey and Ben Godson and Dan Jarvis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.17176},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024