The ROTSE‐III Robotic Telescope System

By C. Akerlof, R. Kehoe, T. McKay, Eli S. Rykoff, D. Smith, D. Casperson, K. McGowan, W. Vestrand, P. Wozniak, J. Wren and 5 more. 2002

181 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB 990123 convincingly demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a program of rapid follow‐up observations of gamma‐ray bursts, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next‐generation instrument, ROTSE‐III, that will continue the search for fast optical transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount, enclosure, environmental sensing and protection, and data acquisition. Each is described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful in similar contexts elsewhere.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec3bfc637f9e88d56d6e04bf8b76f26d39b34960

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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5. Ryan Chornock
6. Weidong Li
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8. J. C. Wheeler

Citations in the corpus

• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era (2009, methodology): “On the ground, fast new telescopes such as ROTSE-III (Akerlof et al. 2003), RAPTOR (Woźniak et al. 2006), Pi-of-the-sky (Burd et al. 2005), and REM (Zerbi et al. 2001) are able to point at GRBs within 10− 20 s, and larger facilities like the seven-band GROND (Greiner et al. 2008) respond on…”
• The IceCube Realtime Alert System (2016, background): “) The program has been operating since December 2008 when interesting neutrino events were initially forwarded to the now-decommissioned ROTSE telescopes [33].”
• HYDROGEN-POOR SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AND LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS HAVE SIMILAR HOST GALAXIES (2013, result): “In addition to the PS1/MDS SLSNe, we also include in our sample H-poor SLSNe reported by other surveys, most notably the PTF Law et al. 2009), the CRTS (Drake et al. 2009) and the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE-III; Akerlof et al. 2003).”
• SN 2005ap: A Most Brilliant Explosion (2007, methodology): “PHOTOMETRY SN 2005ap was discovered on unfiltered optical images taken with the 0.45m ROTSE-IIIb (Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment) telescope (Akerlof et al. 2003), which is located at the McDonald observatory in west Texas.”
• THE MASS–RADIUS(–ROTATION?) RELATION FOR LOW-MASS STARS (2010, unknown): “There have been searches for MDEBs in existing widefield variability surveys like ROTSE (Akerlof et al. 2003) and ASAS (Pojmanski et al. 2005), but only one new MDEB has been reported (GU Boo; Lopez-Morales & Ribas 2005) since the shallow depth of these surveys (Vlim .13) limits their sensitivity to”
• FIRST RESULTS FROM THE CATALINA REAL-TIME TRANSIENT SURVEY (2008, background): “Current Transient Surveys Current wide-field transient surveys include the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSEIII; Akerlof et al. 2003) and the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS-3; Pojmanski 2001).”
• HATSouth: A Global Network of Fully Automated Identical Wide-Field Telescopes (2012, unknown): “ROTSE-III (Akerlof et al. 2003) has been operating an automated network of 0.5m telescopes for the detection of optical transients, with stations in Australia, Namibia, Turkey and the USA.”
• SN 2006gy: Discovery of the Most Luminous Supernova Ever Recorded, Powered by the Death of an Extremely Massive Star like η Carinae (2006, methodology): “…in the peculiar S0/Sa galaxy NGC 1260 was discovered and confirmed by the Texas Supernova Search (TSS; Quimby 2006a) with the ROTSE-IIIb telescope (Akerlof et al. 2003) at McDonald Observatory in unfiltered images (Quimby 2006b) taken on 2006 September 18.3 (UTdates are used throughout this…”
• Rates of superluminous supernovae at z ∼ 0.2 (2013, background): “Although modest in size (the primary mirror is just 0.45m), ROTSE-IIIb has a wide field of view (about 1.85×1.85 degrees per exposure), which allows large swaths of sky to be monitored (Akerlof et al. 2003).”