Masters Thesis

Reduction pipeline for robotic telescope observations of gravitational waves electromagnetic counterparts and other transients

Gravitational waves (GW) are produced by the merger of two compact objects. Observations and analysis of gravitational waves and their electromagnetic counterparts produced in space will help in studying the compact objects and regions of space where strong gravitational field are produced and General Relativity is at play with an unprecedented level of detail. Thanks to the early detection of GW by the LIGO/VIRGO experiments we now know that some of them are connected with the Gamma-ray Bursts (GRB) class of fast astronomical transients. The goal of this project is to create a reduction pipeline for processing the optical images obtained using the RCT (Robotically-Controlled Telescope) at Kitt Peak and the Virgin Island Robotic Telescope (VIRT) RCT and VIRT take images of the night sky autonomously, responding quickly to the discovery of the GRBs (within few minutes). Studying these images will provide a deeper understanding of GRBs and correlation with the GW emitter. Based on the RCT data, a reduction pipeline will be coded to get the final processed science image in real time. Calibration and science images obtained from RCT/VIRT can be processed using the reduction pipeline to get the median of bias and flat images and this processed flat image is further normalized to get a detector response function. Finally, these data can be used to get the final science processed image. The pipeline will be used to automatically analyze the data without any human interaction on RCT/VIRT and will allow immediate data analysis within a few minutes of the GW/GRB discovery, enabling further and more detailed observations from other facilities (e.g. optical spectroscopy, deeper optical/NIR imaging).

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