The Slewing Mirror Telescope of the Ultra Fast Flash Observatory Pathfinder

  • Published : 2012.10.17

Abstract

The Slewing Mirror Telescope (SMT) is a key telescope of Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO) space project to explore the first sub-minute or sub-seconds early photons from the Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) afterglows. The first realization of UFFO is the 20kg UFFO-Pathfinder (UFFO-P) to be launched on board the Russian Lomonosov satellite in 2013 by the Soyuz-2 rocket. Once the UFFO Burst Alert & Trigger Telescope (UBAT) detects the GRBs, Slewing mirror (SM) will rotate to bring the GRB into the SMT's field of view instead of slewing the entire spacecraft. SMT can image the UV/Optical counterpart with about 4-arcsec accuracy. However it will provide a important understanding of the GRB mechanism by measuring the sub-minute optical photons from GRBs. SMT can respond to the trigger over $35^{\circ}{\times}35^{\circ}$ wide field of view within 1 sec by using Slewing Mirror Stage (SMS). SMT has 10-cm Ritchey-Chretien telescope and $256{\times}256$ pixilated Intensified Charge-Coupled Device (ICCD) on focal plane. In this paper, we discuss the overall design of UFFO-P SMT instrument and payloads development status.

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