The Burst Observer and Optical Transient Exploring System (BOOTES)

Abstract

Abstract. The Burst Observer and Optical TransientExploring System (BOOTES) is considered as a part of the preparations for the ESA's satellite INTEGRAL, and is currently being developed in Spain, in collaboration with two Czech institutions. It makes use of two sets of wide-field cameras 240 kms apart, and two robotic 0.3-m telescopes. The first observing station (BOOTES-1) is located in Huelva (Spain) and the first light was obtained in July 1998. During the test phase, it has provided rapid follow-up observations for 5 GRBs detected by the BATSE aboard the CGRO. The system will fully operate in late 1999.

Observational constraints on the afterglow of GRB 020531

“…The TAROT observatory demonstrated that this is possible, provided that the alert is sent quickly by the instrument. The increase in the HETE performances, the recent successful launch of the Curie-INTEGRAL satellite, as well as the perspective of the SWIFT GRB dedicated satellite gives hope that rapid observations of GRB optical counterparts will be soon possible, as it was the case with BATSE (Akerlof et al 1999;Boër et al 2001;Castro-Tirado et al 1999;Park et al 1999).…”

The MASTER-II network of robotic optical telescopes. First results

“…Currently, there are no other systems similar to the network of optical, broadband MASTER telescopes in Russia, and the main characteristics of the MASTER network (field of view, limiting magnitude, bandwidth, synchronous photometry, polarization-sensitive photometry, pointing speed) exceed other such modern systems worldwide (ROTSE-III [3], TAROT [4], PROMPT [5], BOOTES [6]). …”

Slewing Mirror Telescope optics for the early observation of UV/optical photons from Gamma-Ray Bursts

“…Typically the aspect ratio of such mirrors is around 1/8 [22]. Therefore, taking the uniformly increasing the disk (d ~r, M ~r 3 ), we find that I ~r 5 . The damping amplitude is proportional to exp[-t/t 0 ], where t 0 is proportional to I, thus the time constant (i.e.…”

“…The damping amplitude is proportional to exp[-t/t 0 ], where t 0 is proportional to I, thus the time constant (i.e. settling time) is also proportional to r 5 . Now one can reduce the mass (M) and thickness (d) substantially, otherwise it would be extremely expensive to use such mirrors in space.…”

“…In particular, Swift observatory has localized accurately the locations of UV/optical counterparts of hundreds of GRBs in typically 100 s after the gamma ray trigger, since its commencement of in-orbit measurement in 2004. With GRBs Coordinate Network (GCN) circulars via SMSs and e-mails, ground robotic telescopes, such as ROTSE-III, REM, TAROT and BOOTES [5][6][7][8] have observed optical, infrared and radio counterparts of GRBs. However, due to the inherent slow response time for slewing the whole satellite and/or ground telescopes, only a few early UV/optical light curve measurements are available to the world wide academic communities as of today [9,10].…”