The BOOTES network of robotic telescopes, completed and on five continents

The first network of robotic telescopes with stations on five continents has been completed. The work has been completed by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA) of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Spain.

With the BOOTES network (acronym in English for Burst Observatory and Optical Sporadic Source Exploration System), Spain becomes the first country in the world to have a network of autonomous observatories that covers the five continents.

BOOTES is the most comprehensive network of its kind and a unique, fully automated resource for monitoring the sky and supporting observations from space.

“BOOTES is the result of almost twenty-five years of continuous effort, since we installed the first station in 1998 at INTA (Arenosillo, Huelva), the institution that initially supported the project. The complete deployment represents a scientific milestone since it is the first robotic network with a presence on all continents”, highlights Alberto J. Castro-Tirado, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA), dependent on the CSIC, who heads the project since its creation. This has placed it chronologically ahead of the American network, whose Asian station is under construction, and the Russian network, which has no installation in Oceania.

The BOOTES network is managed by the IAA, with strong involvement from the University of Malaga and with the collaboration of other Spanish entities, such as the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) and the University of Huelva, and international entities. Its main objective is to quickly and autonomously observe what are known as transient sources, astrophysical objects that do not present a permanent emission over time, but rather emit light briefly, intensely and suddenly. The detection of these events is usually done from satellites, and BOOTES provides an automated response in real time that allows their characterization.

The network will contribute to the study of gamma-ray bursts, which are the most energetic events in the universe and are associated with the death of very massive stars. Its detection usually occurs through satellites, which inform the scientific community of the outbreak so that the event can be studied in detail. The existence of a network of very fast pointing robotic telescopes such as BOOTES represents an ideal complement to satellite detection and, in fact, BOOTES will also work on tracking and monitoring sources emitting neutrinos and gravitational waves, or even objects such as comets. , asteroids, variable stars or supernovae. But it will also keep an eye on the sky, both in tracking space debris and potentially dangerous objects that may pose a threat to our planet.

The seven stations of the Global BOOTES Network in the five continents. (Image: IAA / CSIC / UMA / INTA)

High impact science with BOOTES

Fast-tracking observations of gamma-ray bursts with BOOTES, from the first few seconds to the final phases, have enabled narrowing models of gamma-ray bursts, and have also contributed to some high-impact results in recent years. One of the observatories of the BOOTES network (the one in Mexico) was the only location in the northern hemisphere that managed to observe in 2017 the event known as GW170817, the fifth detection of gravitational waves in history. The phenomenon responsible for this emission, the merger of two neutron stars, allowed the first simultaneous study in light and gravitational waves for the first time and inaugurated a new era in astronomy.

BOOTES contributed in 2020 to the identification of a very short duration radio burst-producing source in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which was detailed in three studies published in the academic journal Nature. Studies suggested that a magnetar, a neutron star with a very intense magnetic field, could be the cause of this phenomenon.

In 2021, BOOTES contributed to a study, also published in Nature, on different pulses in the giant magnetic flare of a neutron star: in just one tenth of a second, a magnetar released energy equivalent to that produced by the Sun in one hundred thousand years ago, and their detailed analysis revealed multiple pulses at the peak of the eruption, providing insightful new information about these still little-known giant magnetic flares.

“The culmination of the network is a success, since it has been possible with a human team and a budget much lower than those of similar projects. With four stations in the northern hemisphere and three in the southern hemisphere, there will always be at least one telescope covering the northern sky and one covering the southern sky, resulting in enormous efficiency in detecting transient sources. In addition, with all the stations already operational, we can coordinate them as a single observatory that covers the entire planet, the potential of which we will show to the international community at the robotic astrophysics congress that we hold biannually and that will take place in October in Malaga”, points out Castro- thrown away “I conceived the project when I was developing my doctoral thesis in Denmark thirty years ago, and for me it is a dream come true”, concludes the researcher. (Source: IAA / CSIC)