Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-1-2022
Abstract
GRANDMA is a world-wide collaboration with the primary scientific goal of studying gravitational-wave sources, discovering their electromagnetic counterparts and characterizing their emission. GRANDMA involves astronomers, astrophysicists, gravitational-wave physicists, and theorists. GRANDMA is now a truly global network of telescopes, with (so far) 30 telescopes in both hemispheres. It incorporates a citizen science programme (Kilonova-Catcher) which constitutes an opportunity to spread the interest in time-domain astronomy. The telescope network is an heterogeneous set of already-existing observing facilities that operate coordinated as a single observatory. Within the network there are wide-field imagers that can observe large areas of the sky to search for optical counterparts, narrow-field instruments that do targeted searches within a predefined list of host-galaxy candidates, and larger telescopes that are devoted to characterization and follow-up of the identified counterparts. Here we present an overview of GRANDMA after the third observing run of the LIGO/VIRGO gravitational-wave observatories in 2019-2020 and its ongoing preparation for the forthcoming fourth observational campaign (O4). Additionally, we review the potential of GRANDMA for the discovery and follow-up of other types of astronomical transients.
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering
Recommended Citation
Agayeva, S., Aivazyan, V., Alishov, S., Almualla, M., Andrade, C., Antier, S., Bai, J., Baransky, A., Basa, S., Bendjoya, P., Benkhaldoun, Z., Beradze, S., Berezin, D., Bhardwaj, U., Blazek, M., Burkhonov, O., Burns, E., Caudill, S., Christensen, N., Colas, F., Coleiro, A., Corradi, W., Coughlin, M., Culino, T., Darson, D., Datashvili, D., De Wasseige, G., Dietrich, T., Dolon, F., Dornic, D., Dubouil, J., Ducoin, J., & Duverne, P. (2022). The GRANDMA network in preparation for the fourth gravitational-wave observing run. Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering, 12186 https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2630240