The REM Telescope: a Robotic Facility to Promptly Follow-up GRBs and Cosmic Fast Transients

摘要

The REM (Rapid Eye Mount) Telescope is a fully robotic fast-slewing 60-cm telescope. It has been primarily designed and realized to follow-up the early phases of GRBs afterglow detected by space-borne experiments such as SWIFT, HETE II, INTEGRAL, AGILE. Since June 2003, REM is operating in the La Silla Observatory (Chile). The Telescope is equipped with a high throughput Infrared Camera (REMIR) and an optical imaging spectrograph (ROSS) which are simultaneously fed by a dichroic. This allows to collect high S/N data in an unprecedented large spectral range (0.45 – 2.3 μm) on a telescope of this size. The wide band covered, the very fast pointing capability (60 degrees in 5 seconds) and the full robotization make REM the ideal experiment for observation of Gamma Ray Bursts and other fast transients. The REM observatory is an example of a versatile and agile facility necessary to complement large telescopes in fields in which rapid response and/or target pre-screening are necessary. This paper describes the main characteristics and operation modes of the REM observatory and gives an overview of preliminary results obtained during the Science Verification Phase.