•  “Managed withdrawal” of STFC funding
announced on Dec 16
•  Need to look at alternate operations and
funding model.
•  Current level of ops for 1-2 yrs
•  LJMU committed to keep it going
(perhaps not indefinitely).
Does the LT have a future?
YES
Basic specifications
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2.0 metre f/10 ALT/AZ
Fully robotic (no night time supervision
apart from start of night photometricity
check, weekdays there is a daytime daily
visit)
Fully opening enclosure (no delays for
ToO’s)
2 degree / second slew speed
Deployable, folding mirror, allowing
support of up to 5 instruments
Instrument change time < 30 seconds
Maximum field of view 40 arcmin
Common user, general purpose facility
LT is owned, operated and maintained by
Liverpool JMU (30% of time for internal
use).
Current instruments
RATCam - optical CCD camera:
–  2048 x 2048 pixels; 0.135 arcsec/pixel, ~ 4.6arcmin field of view
–  Filters: Sloan u’g’r’i’z’, BV, Hα
SupIRCam - JH near-IR camera
–  256 x 256 HgCdTe, 1.7 arcmin field
–  Pre-defined exp times and dither patterns
FRODOSpec - medium res spectrograph
–
–
–
IFU 11x11 0.9” fibers
2600/5500 resolving power
Blue/red arms
RISE - fast Readout CCD:
–
–
9.2x9.2 arcmin, 0.54 “/pix
Frame-transfer CCD (no readout overhead)
RINGO2 - optical polarimeter:
–
–
–
broad “V+R” filter
EM CCD fast read (8/sec) no read-out noise
Ability to measure optical polarization variations on short (seconds - minutes)
timescales
Future instruments
Simultaneous optical+IR: IO
“Wide” field CCD (10x10 arcmin) ~2010
•  Standard filter suite (ugriz BV + 2)
SupIRCam2 (6x6 arcmin) late 2011 ???
Internal tip-tilt. JH filters
on hold… funding ???
Three Basic Operating Modes
•  Background mode (does standards!)
–  Nothing to schedule
–  Seeing > 3 arcseconds (or unknown)
–  Something is broken (e.g. out of focus!)
•  “Science Control Agent” - phase 2 database
driven
•  Target of Opportunity mode (JMU only)
–  Immediate abort of current observing
–  Driven by scripts
Phase 2 database
•  Specifies the observational setup
•  Methods of data entry:
–  Phase 2 forms via email/web
–  Menus for a specific science programme
–  Robotic Telescope Markup Language (RTML) via
unix socket or Web Services
–  Phase 2 User Tool (all you need is a browser +
Java)
Now active!
GRB menu (used after the 1st
hour automatic override).
Including override.
The scheduling programme will
consider these observations
the same night.
Phase 2 interface (1)
Monitor a bright supernova
every night in several
filters.
Define target, set timing
constraint.
Phase 2 interface
Monitor a bright
supernova every night
in several filters.
Define target, set timing
constraint (monitoring
cadence)
Select instrument
configuration (filters,
exp times, etc.).
With luck, observations
can be done right away.
Data available on
quicklook page after
10-15 minutes.
The LT “edge” (and JMU expertise):
Target of Opportunity
•  Rapid response: interrupt current observations
NOT available to non-JMU users.
•  Average reaction time ~ 3 minutes (slew).
•  A client script (csh, Python) running at the telescope (e.g.
GRB followup).
•  An agent submitting RTML with the appropriate
priority flag.
•  Can include data reduction, decisions made on-the-fly:
interrupt obs, instrument change, etc.
GRB observations (rapid response)
Guidorzi et al.,
2006, PASP
Data reduction (CCD proc, WCS fit, phot) part of pipeline.
What is done on the LT:
Papers by science areas (time
domain)
Science
area
GRB
JMU
PATT
CAT
18
0
1
SNe
2
15
0
Exoplanet
1
11
1
QSO
1
11
6
CV, novae 4
6
0
Other
1
0
0
What we want to do: Lots of GRBs
23 GRB afterglows
Melandri et al 2009
GRB090618 + SN at z=0.5: most of the followup was done
on 2m-class telescopes (incl the LT)
Young et al (2010)
Long-term monitoring (novae, Be stars)
What we want to do
What we can do
Expertise in developing a robotic system (modify an existing telescope?)
Boring non-variable stuff (nearby galaxies, AGN)
More emphasis on time-domain science:
Join a synoptic survey (CVs, novae, SNe, solar system – new areas)
Higher cadence than almost any synoptic survey
Scheduling flexibility: Coordination with space missions (followup; e.g. Swift)
Novel instrumentation
Optical counterpart of non-EM information carriers (GW, n)
Transients:
GRBs (Kobayashi, Melandri, Mundell, Bersier)
Novae (Bode, Darnley)
Early spectroscopy of SNe (Anderson, James),
Transients from various sources:
~now: LOFAR
future: Pan-STARRS, LSST, SVOM, Gaia, etc.
Legacy program(s)?
All talks have a 30min slot. Please aim to speak for 20mins (25 max!) to
allow significant discussion time, as this is the a key point of the meeting.
Many of you will talk about current surveys, your experiences and
expertise. We would like you also to highlight the following points and
issues in your talks, where appropriate.
- what is the scientific and technical expertise you have developed
- what are the key computational challenges in your time domain surveys,
both current and future
- what are your science goals, requirements and aspirations for future
surveys