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The Rapid Eye Mount telescope (REM) is a fully automatic, 60 cm aperture
The telescope has been designed to be a fast pointing instrument, and its relatively small size is in fact balanced by a 10°/s accurate fast pointing. This velocity makes REM suitable for immediate response to random alerts.
The telescope hosts two instruments: REMIR, an
INAF REM site
ESO press release about GRB060418 and GRB060607A
ESO press release about GRB080319B
REM and TORTORA
telescope
A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...
located at ESO
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based ast ...
's La Silla Observatory
La Silla Observatory is an astronomy, astronomical observatory in Chile with three telescopes built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Several other telescopes are located at the site and are partly maintained by ESO. The obse ...
at 2,400 metres altitude on the edge of the Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the ...
in Chile. The telescope's aim is to catch the afterglows of gamma-ray bursts
In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten millise ...
(GRBs). REM is triggered by a signal from a high-energy satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...
such as Swift
Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to:
* SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks
** SWIFT code
* Swift (programming language)
* Swift (bird), a family of birds
It may also refer to:
Organizations
* SWIFT, ...
and rapidly points to the detected location in the sky. It is operated for the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics
The National Institute for Astrophysics ( it, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, or INAF) is an Italian research institute in astronomy and astrophysics, founded in 1999. INAF funds and operates twenty separate research facilities, which in turn e ...
since 2002.
Telescope
The telescope has been designed to be a fast pointing instrument, and its relatively small size is in fact balanced by a 10°/s accurate fast pointing. This velocity makes REM suitable for immediate response to random alerts.
The telescope hosts two instruments: REMIR, an infrared imaging
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...
camera, and ROSS, a visible imager and slitless spectrograph. The two cameras can observe simultaneously thanks to a dichroic
In optics, a dichroic material is either one which causes visible light to be split up into distinct beams of different wavelengths (colours) (not to be confused with dispersion), or one in which light rays having different polarizations are abs ...
placed before telescope focus the same field of view of 10×10 arc minutes. In the infrared range from 1 to 2.3 µm
The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American spelling), also commonly known as a micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Unit ...
REMIR can use a (z′, J, H, K′) filter set. ROSS is equipped with a standard filter set (V, R, I) and an slitless Amici prism
An Amici prism, named for the astronomer Giovanni Battista Amici, is a type of compound dispersive prism used in spectrometers. The Amici prism consists of two triangular prisms in contact, with the first typically being made from a medium-di ...
.
The observing procedure is completely robotic and the nightly schedule is optimized for the observation of scheduled targets but it is immediately overdriven by GRB (or other) alerts. Typically REM can observe the new target after 30 seconds from notification.
REM has been installed in its place during June 2003 and has been gathering data on GRB and other sources since then. Also it is a bench for experimental instrumentation and equipment.
In 2006 a wide-field camera parallel to the REM telescope, the TORTORA camera (Telescopio Ottimizzato per la Ricerca dei Transienti Ottici RApidi) was installed. TORTORA has a field of view of 24°x32° through an objective of 120 mm diameter. The instrument was optimized for photometry Photometry can refer to:
* Photometry (optics), the science of measurement of visible light in terms of its perceived brightness to human vision
* Photometry (astronomy), the measurement of the flux or intensity of an astronomical object's electrom ...
of fast transients with a best time resolution of about 0.1 s.
The observatory is operated for the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica
The National Institute for Astrophysics ( it, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, or INAF) is an Italian research institute in astronomy and astrophysics, founded in 1999. INAF funds and operates twenty separate research facilities, which in turn e ...
by the REM Team.
Main results
Since its installation and commissioning at ESO, REM rapid and multi-band observations allowed to contribute to several important discoveries in some cases widely reported by ESO press releases; for instance, the observations a few seconds after its discovery of GRB060418, GRB06067A and GRB080319B. In addition, a larger set of observations of targets different from GRBs has been performed, securing long time series of data for variable stars, AGNs, etc.References
{{ReflistExternal links
INAF REM site
ESO press release about GRB060418 and GRB060607A
ESO press release about GRB080319B
REM and TORTORA
See also
* TAROT-South robotic observatory, an even smaller and faster-moving telescope also at La Silla Astronomical instruments Robotic telescopes