The search for optical emission on and before the GRB trigger with the WIDGET telescope
Abstract
WIDGET is a robotic telescope for monitoring the HETE-2 field-of-view to detect Gamma-ray Burst optical flashes or possible optical precursors. The system has 62degx62deg wide field-of-view which covers about 80% of HETE-2 one with a 2kx2k Apogee U10 CCD camera and a Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 wide-angle lens without a bandpass filter. WIDGET has been in operation since June 2004 at Akeno observing site where is about 200 km apart from Tokyo. Typical limiting magnitude with S/N=3 at the site is V=10mag for 5 seconds exposure and V=11mag for 30 seconds exposure. We had already six coincident observations with HETE-2 position alerts. It was, however, cloudy for all cases due to rainy season in Japan. Expected number of coincident observations under clear sky is about 5 events per year. We will extend the system in early 2005 for Swift era to monitor optical transients in wider field-of-view, multi-color or polarization modes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0506234,
title = {The search for optical emission on and before the GRB trigger with the WIDGET telescope},
author = {T. Tamagawa and F. Usui and Y. Urata and K. Abe and K. Onda and M. Tashiro and Y. Terada and H. Fujiwara and N. Miura and S. Hirose and N. Kawai and A. Yoshida and M. Mori and K. Makishima},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0506234},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figure. Accepted for publication into "il nuovo cimento". Proceeding of the 4th Rome GRB conference, eds. L. Piro, L. Amati, S. Covino, B. Gendre