The Liverpool Telescope Automatic Pipeline for Real - time GRB

— The 2-m robotic Liverpool Telescope (LT) is ideally suited to the rapid follow-up of unpredictable and transient events such as GRBs. Our GRB follow-up strategy is designed to identify optical/IR counterparts in real time; it involves the automatic triggering of initial observations, on receipt of an alert from Gamma Ray Observatories HETE-2, INTEGRAL and Swift, followed by automated data reduction, analysis, OT identification and subsequent observing mode choice. The lack of human intervention in this process requires robustness at all stages of the procedure. Here we describe the telescope, its instrumentation and GRB pipeline. PACS 95.55.Cs – Ground-based ultraviolet, optical and infrared telescopes. PACS 95.75.Mn – Image processing (including source extraction). PACS 95.75.Rs – Remote observing techniques. PACS 98.70.Rz – gamma-ray sources; gamma-ray bursts. 1. – GRB follow-up strategy with the Liverpool Telescope The LT has a 2-m primary mirror, final focal ratio f/10, altitude-azimuth design, image quality < 0.4 " on axis, rapid slew rate of 2 • /sec and five instrument ports (4 folded and one straight-through, selected by a deployable, rotating mirror in the AG Box within 30 sec). The telescope began science operations in January 2004 and has entered the robotic (unmanned) operation phase with an automated scheduler in summer 2004. At present, instrumentation (Table I) includes Optical and Infrared imaging cameras. A prototype low resolution spectrograph will be commissioned in 2005 and a higher resolution spectrograph is being developed for 2006.