First robotic telescope network goes into operation on five continents

The Burst Observer and Optical Transient Reconnaissance System (BOOTES) is the first telescopes Robotics deployed on five continents after nearly 25 years of effort to complete project development. Information published in scientific journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Scienceson January 16.

The project is a development of the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA), the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), the University of Malaga and other institutions in Spain and other countries. In total, there were two installations in Spain and one each in New Zealand, China, Mexico, South Africa and Chile.

The telescope network was developed to use synchronized information from different sources on five continents and provide fast and real-time visualization of astronomical events. The use of the network is for transient source events that emit light in a short, intense and fast manner, unlike other observations of objects with permanent emission.

“BOOTES is the result of almost twenty-five years of continuous effort since we installed the first station in 1998 at the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA), the institution that initially supported the project. Alberto J. Castro-Tirado, IAA-CSIC scientist and co-author of the paper,” “Because it’s the first robotic network to exist on all continents,” he said.

robotic telescopes

As described in the article, the BOOTES network should help observe gamma-ray bursts associated with the death of massive stars. Often satellites are used to warn of gamma-ray events, but the mesh will work much better because of its speed – in addition to such observations, robotic telescopes can detect comets, asteroids, variable stars, supernovas and other objects. emits gravitational waves.

Although its implementation was only completed in 2023, the project began to stand out years ago: major observations were made in 2017 with the detection of the first data of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational wave, named GW170817. In 2020, BOOTES observed short-lived radio waves found in the Milky Way, and in 2021 detected pulses in a magnetic burst from a neutron star.