The goal of the Télescope à Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires (TAROT-1, Rapid Action Telescope for Transient Objects) is to fill this observationnal gap, and to acquire data while the GRB source is still active at high energy wavelengths. TAROT-1 is a fully automated observatory, able to preset rapidly to any point of the sky upon a request sent by the GRB Coordinate Network (GCN; [Barthelmy et al. 1999]), and then to perform the observation of the GRB source error box.
Since we get an alert about every 15 days, there is ample time to address secondary science objectives. Most of it will be used to perform a complete survey of the sky accessible from TAROT-1, used as a reference for the detection of new or variable objects in subsequent frames. Other objectives range from the detection of supernovae, eventually associated with GRBs, to the detection and follow-up of variable objects. In this paper we present the main characteristics of the TAROT-1 experiment, the first data acquired from it, and the perspectives of development.
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