Installation of the MASTER telescopes in Argentina

LEVATO, HUGO; SAFFE, CARLOS; MALLAMACI, CARLOS; PODESTÁ, FEDERICO; LÓPEZ, CARLOS; LIPUNOV, VLADIMIR; GORBOVSKOY, EVGENY; BELINSKY, ALEXANDER

Mar del Plata

Congreso; 55 Reunión de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2012

Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía

We present in this work the installation of the MASTER telescopes in Argentina. The MASTER project (Mobile Astronomical System of TElescope Robots) started in 2002 with the first telescope installed near Moscow. Then, with the join efforts of several astronomical institutions in Russia (the Sternberg Astronomical Institute, the Universities of Ural, Irkutsk, Blagoveshchenk, the Pulkovo observatory) and Argentina (ICATE and OAFA, Universidad Nacional de San Juan) the robotic telescopes were installed and tested in different locations. The main goals of the MASTER telescope network is the synchronous multi-color and polarimetric observation of GRB (gamma-ray bursts), supernovae search, study of orphan afterglows and other optical transient events. To date, we have installed a new MASTER-VWF (very wide eld) cameras at the Cesco Observatory in San Juan, Argentina. Their main task is to perform an all-sky monitoring and follow alert events from GRBs.