flux of events?

[Petr Kubanek]

Rob,


Rob Seaman napsal(a):
> Hola,
> 
> As those who attended the Hotwired workshop will know, I've been working 
> on a demonstration robotic telescope.  This is really just a single 
> component in a larger autonomous system.  The first hurdle was 
> mechanical.  A little tinkering with gear boxes will tighten up the 
> motions of the telescope.  The next will be software.  So far I'm very 
> pleased with the new Java environment compared to the native 
> LabVIEW-based language.  After that is systems engineering to get 

I'm quite interest to know how many RT projects programmed in LabVIEW
does actually run. We had some LabVIEW components, which we throw away
and replaced with C/C++ drivers, as we found that LabVIEW does not meet
all requirements we have on language for RT. If somebody point me to RT
run by LabVIEW, I'll be quite happy to admit that I was wrong:). So far
I know about PROMT, but I'm unsure how big part of it was done in
LabVIEW and how smoothly it actually run. RT is most probably not a
chemical factory, so LabVIEW is not a best approach?

> multiple components talking to each other.

At least 1/2 of the way to go, but most probably more.

> The really hard part is developing curriculum.  This is intended to be 
> used for outreach of various sorts as well as to try out different 
> autonomous strategies.  As I consider what information it is I want to 
> convey, it has occurred to me that I don't have a good holistic sense 
> for what our transient universe looks like.
> 
> For instance, what is our best estimate of the hourly (or daily or 
> monthly) flux for different classes of objects throughout the universe?  
> Supernovae are something like 10^2 per hour, right?  These would have an 
> isotropic distribution on the sky, correct?  Other phenomena will align 
> with the galactic plane or ecliptic, of course.  What about the rates 
> for GRBs?  How about events local to the Milky Way?  Solar system?  
> Classes of variable stars - prevalence and detectability?  Etc and so 
> forth.  Pointers to papers and web sites would be delightful.

Do not know about others, but do know about GRBs.

Frequency - expected at least 1 in day, due to instrument constrainst
(satellite visibility,..), you get roughly 100/year from Swift, 10/year
from INTEGRAL, that's make 2-3 per week. For that see any Swift GRB
review paper, e.g. http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/2007ChJAA...7....1Z,
but you might find better one. That is an average, so you can get few
weeks without one, and then 3 in one night.

If you are interested in quick follow-ups:

Make 1/2 out, as they happen during day. Another 1/2 as they happen
bellow horizon. Another 1/5-2/3 as they happens when weather is bad. And
do not expect to:

- have optical emission more then 1/3 of GBRs
- about 50% of them have OT lower then 16 mag, which we target at our
small RTs, so that makes 1/6 of GRBs you can observe.

Some easy maths will give you that you cannot expect to follow GRB more
often then once a week and see OT of GRB more often then once in month
with single RT. And regard those numbers as optimistic estimate.

If you are interested in long-term monitoring (e.g. have 8+m class
instrument and wants to measure long-term LC or get spectra), you can
have one at each night, which will be worthy to observe.

Very nice poster regarding the best location to observe GRBs (on Earth)
was seen at last GRB conference from A. Klotz et al., maybe you can ask
him to send you data for their plot.

Petr