Alert Chain and Observation Planning for Ground Wide Angle Camera Network
Xu-Hui Han Pin-Pin Zhang Yu-Jie Xiao Li-Ping Xin Ruo-Song Zhang Lei Huang Xiao-Meng Lu Hong-Bo Cai Yang Xu Wen-Long Dong Hua-Li Li Ya-Tong Zheng Jian-Yan Wei
Alert Chain and Observation Planning for Ground Wide Angle Camera Network
摘要
The Ground Wide Angle Camera Network (GWAC-N) is a robotic telescope network. It consists of ten wide-field core telescopes (GWAC-A) and two 60 cm narrow-field rapid follow-up telescopes (GWAC-F60A/B). The primary scientific goal of GWAC-N is to detect optical counterparts of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) discovered by the Space-based multi-band Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) satellite. This is achieved through synchronized monitoring with the GWAC-A array. Upon receiving a GRB trigger alert, the network conducts rapid, multi-band follow-up observations using the GWAC-F60A/B telescopes. The two-stage observation process involves many telescopes, making manual control impractical. Automated operations are therefore essential. They are realized through an integrated alert processing chain and an automated observation scheduling and dispatching mechanism. To enable this, we employ the SVOM Follow-up Observation Coordinating Service (FOCS) and GWAC-N’s Automatic Observation Management (AOM) system. This paper presents the integrated alert processing workflow. It also describes the formulation of observation strategies, and the scheduling and execution of observations enabled by FOCS and AOM.