LOTIS: GRB follow-up observations at early times

¹ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, U.S.A.
² Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A.
³ CASS 0424, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, U.S.A.
⁴ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, U.S.A.
⁵ Unversity Space Research Association, U.S.A.
⁶ NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35812, U.S.A.
⁷ Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.

Send offprint request to: H.S. Park

Received: 29 December 1998
Accepted: 23 March 1999

Abstract

LOTIS is an automated wide field-of-view telescope system capable of responding to GRB events as early as 10 s after a trigger from the GCN which rapidly distributes coordinates from the BeppoSAX, BATSE and RXTE instruments. Measurements of optical activity at these early times will provide important clues to the GRB production mechanism. In over two year's of operation, LOTIS has responded to 40 GCN triggers including GRB 971227 within 10 s and GRB 980703 within 5 hours. We report results from these events and constraints on simultaneous optical signals during these GRBs.