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SkyMapper Optical Follow-up of Gravitational Wave Triggers: Alert Science Data Pipeline and LIGO/Virgo O3 Run
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- We present an overview of the SkyMapper optical follow-up program for gravitational-wave event triggers from the LIGO/Virgo observatories, which aims at identifying early GW170817-like kilonovae out to $\sim 200$ Mpc distance. We describe our robotic facility for rapid transient follow-up, which can target most of the sky at $\delta<+10\deg $ to a depth of $i_\mathrm{AB}\approx 20$ mag. We have implemented a new software pipeline to receive LIGO/Virgo alerts, schedule observations and examine the incoming real-time data stream for transient candidates. We adopt a real-bogus classifier using ensemble-based machine learning techniques, attaining high completeness ($\sim$98%) and purity ($\sim$91%) over our whole magnitude range. Applying further filtering to remove common image artefacts and known sources of transients, such as asteroids and variable stars, reduces the number of candidates by a factor of more than 10. We demonstrate the system performance with data obtained for GW190425, a binary neutron star merger detected during the LIGO/Virgo O3 observing campaign. In time for the LIGO/Virgo O4 run, we will have deeper reference images allowing transient detection to $i_\mathrm{AB}\approx $21 mag.<br />Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in PASA
- Subjects :
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.2102.07353
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2021.17