Detection of short optical transients of astrophysical origin in real time

Abstract

Real-time analysis of data from optical telescopes becomes very important topic in the modern astronomy. Particularly interesting and important is fast automatic identification of short optical transients. Many violent and interesting processes occur on very short timescales. Such kind of processes may be related to gamma-ray bursts, but there are also other interesting processes in the short time regime. One of the biggest problems with their investigation is fast detection and distribution, which would allow deeper studies in the most interesting phase of the event. Thus development of real-time pipelines for identification of optical transients is a very hot topic. Another issue which becomes important is that data streams produced by modern astronomical experiments becomes larger and larger, which requires real-time analysis and pre-selection of only most interesting data. We present implementation of such a pipeline dedicated to identification of optical transients in the "Pi of the Sky" experiment.

Photometric Analysis of Pi of the Sky Data

“…For stars from 7 m to 10 m , the photometry error is less than ∼ 0.015 magnitudo. The dispersion is still larger for stars of greater or lower brightness, but the accuracy of the photometry is greatly improved [5,6].…”