Astronomical Transients with GOTO

Armagh Observatory is a full partner of the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO)
project which aims to detect the optical counterpart of gravitational wave
events detected by the Advanced Ligo and Virgo detectors. It is sited on the island of La Palma in the
Canaries, and Phase I operations are proceeding. The recent detection of the optical counterpart of a
merging neutron star binary in Sept 2017 showed that these counterparts are bright enough to be
detected by GOTO. However, this outburst was located too far to the south to be detected by GOTO.
Our strategy involves mapping the observable sky on a regular basis. The data is providing a huge
resource to study variable stars; transients such as gamma-ray bursts and supernova; flare stars;
asteroids and comets and time domain astrophysics in general. This PhD project will utilise
data obtained using GOTO to help characterise the quality of the data taken from the different telescopes
and focus on a number of science topics which GOTO can address. Data obtained from other telescopes
such as ZTF, Swift and TESS will provide additional observational material.