“Pi of the Sky” experiment has been designed for continuous observations of
a large part of the sky, in search for astrophysical phenomena characterized
by short timescales, especially for prompt optical counterparts of Gamma
Ray Bursts (GRBs). Other scientific goals include searching for novae and
supernovae stars and monitoring of blasars and AGNs activity. “Pi of the Sky” is a fully autonomous, robotic detector, which can operate for long periods of time without a human supervision. A crucial element of the detector is
an advanced software for real-time data analysis and identification of short
optical transients. The most important result so far has been an independent
detection and observation of the prompt optical emission of the “naked-eye” GRB080319B.

Katarzyna Ma&#x142;ek

Tadeusz Batsch

Henryk Czyrkowski

Miko&#x142;aj &#x106;wiok

Ryszard D&#x105;browski

Wojciech Dominik

Grzegorz Kasprowicz

Ariel Majcher

Agnieszka Majczyna

Lech Mankiewicz

Krzysztof Nawrocki

Robert Pietrzak

Lech W. Piotrowski

Maria Ptasi&#x0144;ska

Ma&#x142;gorzata Siudek

Marcin Soko&#x142;owski

Janusz U&#x17C;ycki

Piotr Wawer

Roman Wawrzaszek

Grzegorz Wrochna

Marcin Zaremba

Aleksander F. &#x17B;arnecki

“Pi of the Sky” Detector

The Telescopi ROBotic de ARas (TROBAR) is a new robotic facility built at
Aras de Los Olmos (Valencia, Spain). This is a 60&#x2009;cm telescope equipped with a <svg style="vertical-align:-0.3135pt;width:53.537498px;" id="M1" height="11.1875" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 53.537498 11.1875" width="53.537498"  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
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</svg> FoV, and it will be primarily used for a systematic search of Ha emitting stars in the Galactic Plane to a depth of <svg style="vertical-align:-0.0pt;width:15.175px;" id="M4" height="7.5500002" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 15.175 7.5500002" width="15.175"  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
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</svg>14&#x2009;mag. Both data acquisition and reduction will be performed automatically. The robotization of data acquisition is now entering its final coding phase while the development of the data reduction pipeline has just started.

Mauro Stefanon

The Software for the Robotization of the TROBAR Telescope

The double station observation of the meteors by means of sensitive image intensifier technique started at the Ondrejov Observatory 10 years ago. The sensitivity of such instrumentation allows detection of the meteors down to masses of fractions of gram. Moreover, video technique provides us with a time resolution of the meteor events. On the other side, the precision of the video data is lower in comparison with the photographic data. We are introducing technological progress on the project&#x2014;replacing of the S-VHS camcorders with gigabite, ethernet cameras and making the whole process of video observation
automatic.

Stanislav V&#xed;tek

Pavel Koten

Petr P&#xe1;ta

Karel Fliegel

Double-Station Automatic Video Observation of the Meteors

The Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (AIP) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) inaugurated the robotic telescopes STELLA-I and STELLA-II (STELLar Activity) on Tenerife on May 18, 2006. The observatory is located on the Izaña ridge at an elevation of 2400 m near the German Vacuum Tower Telescope. STELLA consists of two 1.2 m alt-az telescopes. One telescope fiber feeds a bench-mounted high-resolution echelle spectrograph while the other telescope feeds a wide-field imaging photometer. Both scopes work autonomously by means of artificial intelligence. Not only that the telescopes are automated, but the entire observatory operates like a robot, and does not require any human presence on site.

Klaus G. Strassmeier

Thomas Granzer

Michael Weber

Manfred Woche

Emil Popow

Arto Järvinen

Janos Bartus

Svend-Marian Bauer

Frank Dionies

Thomas Fechner

Wilbert Bittner

Jens Paschke

The STELLA Robotic Observatory on Tenerife

The Montsec Astronomical Observatory (OAdM) is a small-class observatory working in fully unattended control, due to the isolation of the site. Robotic operation is, then, mandatory for its routine use. We present a description of the general control software and several software packages developed. The general control software protects the system specially at the identified single points of failure and makes a distributed control of any subsystem.

Josep Colomé

Ignasi Ribas

Xavier Francisco

Kevin Casteels

David Fernández

Jordi Isern

Xavier Palau

Jordi Torra

The OAdM Robotic Observatory

The ESA INTEGRAL satellite (International Gamma Ray Laboratory) launched in October 2002 continues to deliver valuable data about the gamma-ray sky. Nearly 450 gamma-ray sources have been detected so far mainly by the IBIS onboard instrument, and others are expected in the future. The first 3.5 years of INTEGRAL public and Core Program data have revealed more than 400 sources and this number is expected to increase to more than 500 in the future (Bird et al. 2007). Alternative method to identify and to analyze INTEGRAL gamma-ray sources using optical light and astronomical archival plates is described, together with additional results from analyses of high-energy sources in these databases.

René Hudec

Miloš Klíma

Identification and Analyses in Optical Light of Gamma-Ray Sources with Astronomical Archival Plates

A global network of small automated telescopes, the Taiwan Automated Telescope (TAT) network, dedicated to photometric measurements of stellar pulsations, is under construction. Two telescopes have been installed in Teide Observatory, Tenerife, Spain and Maidanak Observatory, Uzbekistan. The third telescope will be installed at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, USA. Each system uses a 9-cm Maksutov-type telescope. The effective focal length is 225&#x2009;cm, corresponding to an <svg     style="vertical-align:-3.56265pt;width:11.0375px;" id="M1" height="16.6625" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 11.0375 16.6625" width="11.0375"  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
	
		
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</svg>-ratio of 25. The field of view is 0.62 degree square. The images are taken with a 16-bit <svg     style="vertical-align:-0.1638pt;width:82.9375px;" id="M2" height="11.125" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 82.9375 11.125" width="82.9375"  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
	
		
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</svg> CCD camera. The telescope is equipped with UBVRI filters. Each telescope is fully automated. The telescope
can be operated either interactively or fully automatically. In the interactive mode, it can be controlled through the Internet. In the fully automatic mode, the telescope operates with preset parameters without any human care, including taking dark frames and flat frames. The network can also be used for studies that require continuous observations for selected objects.

Dean-Yi Chou

Ming-Tsung Sun

Javier Fernandez Fernandez

Li-Han Wang

Antonio Jimenez

Alexander Serebryanskiy

Shuhrat Ehgamberdiev

Taiwan Automated Telescope Network

We present the photometric analysis of the extended sky fields observed by the TORTORA optical monitoring system. The technology involved in the TORTORA camera is based on the use of a fast TV-CCD matrix with an image intensifier. This approach can both significantly reduce the readout noise and shorten the focal length following to monitor relatively large sky regions with high temporal resolution and adequate detection limit. The performance of the system has been tested using the relative magnitudes of standard stars by means of long image sequences collected at different airmasses and at various intensities of the moon illumination. As expected from the previous laboratory measurements, artifact sources are negligible and do not affect the photometric results. The following analysis is based on a large sample of images acquired by the TORTORA instrument since July 2006.

G. Greco

G. Beskin

S. Karpov

S. Bondar

C. Bartolini

A. Guarnieri

A. Piccioni

High-Speed and Wide-Field Photometry with TORTORA

We present a method for scheduling observations in small field-of-view transient targeted surveys. The method is based on maximizing the probability of detection of transient events of a given type and age since occurrence; it requires knowledge of the time since the last observation for every observed field, the expected light curve of the event, and the expected rate of events in the fields where the search is performed. In order to test this scheduling strategy we use a modified version of the genetic scheduler developed for the telescope control system RTS2. In particular, we present example schedules designed for a future 50 cm telescope that will expand the capabilities of the CHASE survey, which aims to detect young supernova events in nearby galaxies. We also include a brief description of the telescope and the status of the project, which is expected to enter a commissioning phase in 2010.

Francisco Förster

Nicolás López

José Maza

Petr Kubánek

G. Pignata

Scheduling in Targeted Transient Surveys and a New Telescope for CHASE

We present a standalone software tool which makes reports for
analysis and evaluation of GRBs. Recently, analysis and evaluation of GRBs were done without help of semiautomated tools or routines; so the time elapsed from the detection until getting all the information produced (DSS-2 data: Digitized Sky Surveys, elevation diagrams in each observatory, etc.) could be 30 minutes. The software presented allows to reduce the time elapsed to 30 seconds, getting an email, web, and sms reports.

Sebastián Castillo-Carrión

Alberto Javier Castro-Tirado

Making Preliminary GRBs Real-Time Astronomical Reports

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