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Robotic telescopes for high energy astrophysics in Ondřejov

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Abstract

We report on two small aperture robotic telescopes called BART and D50 operated in Ondřejov. Both telescopes are capable of automatic observation of gamma ray burst (GRB) optical afterglows. Coordinates of GRBs are taken from alerts distributed via Internet. Telescopes observe other interesting high energy sources when there is not any alert. The smaller telescope BART has aperture D = 254 mm. The bigger telescope D50 has a primary mirror of diameter D = 500 mm. Both telescopes are controlled by free software package RTS2 and are accessible through Internet. We describe the two telescopes and related software and show some results such as our first observed optical counterpart of GRB.

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Acknowledgement

We acknowledge grants: PECS 98023, GA ČR 205/08/1207.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Ondřejov, Czech Republic

    Martin Nekola, René Hudec, Matůš Kocka, Cyril Polášek, Vojtěch Šimon & Jan Štrobl

  2. IAA CSIC, Granada, Spain

    Martin Jelínek & Petr Kubánek

  3. IASF/INAF, Bologna, Italy

    Filip Münz

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  1. Martin Nekola
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  2. René Hudec
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  3. Martin Jelínek
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  4. Matůš Kocka
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  5. Petr Kubánek
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  6. Filip Münz
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  7. Cyril Polášek
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  8. Vojtěch Šimon
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  9. Jan Štrobl
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Correspondence to Martin Nekola.

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Nekola, M., Hudec, R., Jelínek, M. et al. Robotic telescopes for high energy astrophysics in Ondřejov. Exp Astron 28, 79–85 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-010-9190-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-010-9190-5

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