Hunting for Gamma Ray Bursts with Pi of the Sky telescopes in Chile and Spain

Abstract

Pi of the Sky is a system of wide field-of-view robotic telescopes which search for short timescale astrophysical phenomena, especially for prompt optical GRB emission. The system is designed for autonomous operation, follows the predefined observing strategy and adopts it to the actual conditions. Simultaneous observations from locations in Chile and Spain allow a systematic search for optical transients of cosmological origin. Accurate analysis of data arising from a wide-field system like Pi of the Sky is a real challenge because of a number of factors that can influence the measurements. We have developed a set of dedicated algorithms which remove poor quality measurements, improve photometric accuracy and allow us to reach uncertainties as low as 0.015-0.02 mag.