Followup Observations in the Swift Era

1
Followup Observations in the Swift Era

• S. R. Kulkarni
• California Institute of Technology

2
New at Palomar

• Palomar 60-inch now automated
• Goal Produce uniform set of light
  curves
• Fox (Project Scientist),
  Harrison Kulkarni (PI)
• CCD filter wheel (focus on I, z
  bands)
• 20 Caltech Community (only Q
  scheduled)
• 10 IPAC (Q scheduled Data
  Pipeline and Archive)
• 70 GRB Team (all TOO)
• Palomar 24-inch robotic telescope
• Brown (PI) First light April 2004
• 20 SRK
• CCD filter wheel

3
Radio Followup

• Will there be sufficient resources?
• Need radio light curves for many bursts
  (ordinary and otherwise)
• But, few radio facilities (cf optical
  facilities)
• Our large VLA/BeppoSAX Large program
  1hr/day
• gtgt Suggest aggressive WSRT ATCA
  program
• Radio monitoring would be useful (especially
• for supernovae and other transients)
• refurbish old facilities?
• e.g. 40-m OVRO telescope
• linkup with JPL DSN upgrade
  project?

4
First few months Shared Risk

• Maintain transparency
• View community at large as volunteers to help out
  the project
• Astronomers understand error radii, stochastic
  and systematic errors
• Rough fluences and fluxes should be a part and
  parcel of every event

5
Routine Operations

• An impressive number of followup facilities have
  been organized in response to Swift.
• - Robotic Telescopes
• - Large Telescope Key projects
• - Existing Networks are ready to go
• Host galaxy studies will lag other studies.
• This is not a major issue.

6
Followup Architecture

• Plan A Swift project spearheads followup.
• Organization of such a large followup program
  is logistically hard.
• Plan B GCN as the central clearing house.
• Assumes organic growth of community
  based efforts.
• Swift sold as community mission.
• gtgt Suggest a workshop in Spring.

7
Swift Response My view

• Have a default X-ray/UVOT observing sequence
• Helps the community plan followup
• Uniform data sets will be one of the
  legacies of Swift
• Exceptions to be made for exceptional bursts
• Announce these via GCN.

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Advice to Team

• Please publish Swift-specific papers rapidly
• Obviously morale booster for team
• Energizes community to respond with
• followup papers
• Publish Swift catalog every six months
• This will drive synthesis studies