Followup Observations in the Swift Era

S. R. Kulkarni

California Institute of Technology

New at Palomar

• Palomar 60-inch now automated Goal: Produce uniform set of light curves Fox (Project Scientist), Harrison & Kulkarni (PI) CCD + filter wheel (focus on I, z bands) 20% Caltech Community (only Q scheduled) 10% IPAC (Q scheduled; Data Pipeline and Archive) 70% GRB Team (all TOO)

• Palomar 24-inch robotic telescope Brown (PI); First light April 2004

20% SRK CCD + filter wheel

Radio Followup• Will there be sufficient resources? Need radio light curves for many bursts (ordinary and

otherwise) But, few radio facilities (cf optical facilities) Our large VLA/BeppoSAX Large program: 1hr/day >> Suggest aggressive WSRT & ATCA program

• Radio monitoring would be useful (especially for supernovae and other transients) refurbish old facilities? e.g. 40-m OVRO telescope linkup with JPL DSN upgrade project?

First few months: Shared Risk

• Maintain transparency

• View community at large as volunteers to help out the project

• Astronomers understand error radii, stochastic and systematic errors

• Rough fluences and fluxes should be a part and parcel of every event

Routine Operations

• An impressive number of followup facilities have been organized in response to Swift.

- Robotic Telescopes

- Large Telescope Key projects

- Existing Networks are ready to go

• Host galaxy studies will lag other studies.

This is not a major issue.

Followup Architecture

• Plan A: Swift project spearheads followup.

Organization of such a large followup program is logistically hard.

• Plan B: GCN as the central clearing house.

Assumes organic growth of community based efforts.

Swift sold as community mission.

>> Suggest a workshop in Spring.

Swift Response: My view

• Have a default X-ray/UVOT observing sequence

Helps the community plan followup

Uniform data sets will be one of the legacies of Swift

• Exceptions to be made for exceptional bursts

Announce these via GCN.

Advice to Team

• Please publish Swift-specific papers rapidly

Obviously morale booster for team

Energizes community to respond with

followup papers

• Publish Swift catalog every six months

This will drive synthesis studies