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Up: TAROT: Observing gamma-ray bursts


1 Introduction


Until now half a dozen of Gamma-Ray Bursts (hereafter GRBs) have been detected at optical wavelengths, usually several hours at least after the detection of the Gamma-Ray Burst event itself, because of the time needed for the Beppo-SAX team to get and analyse the data from the satellite. On the other hand, CGRO/BATSE produces a large number of source positions, though they are difficult to use because of their large error radii. The intermediate case will be HETE-II, which will produce 25 moderately accurate localizations per year. At present we can state that the from the time starting at the GRB onset, and for few hours, GRB optical counterparts are almost a terra incognita.

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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Up: TAROT: Observing gamma-ray bursts

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