Speaker
Description
The Gravitational-Wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a wide-field robotic optical instrument currently in operation on La Palma, Canary Islands. The scalable design consists of 8 individual 40 cm diameter astrographs on a single mount to instantaneously image a large 40 square degree field-of-view. The primary aim of GOTO is to detect and study electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) events from Advanced LIGO and Virgo. We describe the current status of our real-time operation, how we robotically control the instrument, post-process the nightly influx of data, and identify and categorise unique transients using in-house pipeline and control systems. Finally, we will discuss recent results from optical follow-ups of GW events thus far from LIGO's third observing run.
