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J. R. Cummings (GSFC/NRC), BAT Instrument Team
The Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is one of three telescopes aboard the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer that was launched on November 20, 2004. Swift's primary purpose is to identify and localize astronomical gamma-ray bursts and study their X-ray, UV and optical afterglow emission within seconds of the burst trigger. BAT provides the initial burst positions, as well as gamma-ray light curves and spectra within a 15-150 keV band. BAT is a coded aperture imaging telescope with a wide (~2 sr) field of view consisting of a large coded mask located 1 m above a 5200 cm2 array of 32,768 CZT detectors. When a burst is located, BAT requests a rapid spacecraft slew in order to point the narrow-field X-ray and UV/optical telescopes at the source.
As of the time of this abstract submission, BAT has detected and located onboard 24 bursts. In addition, some faint bursts that were not imaged with sufficient significance onboard have been found in the ground analysis. BAT triggers and imags outbursts of known sources as well, and automatically requests spacecraft slews to sources of sufficient interest. By the time of the conference we expect to report on the detection and automatic response of BAT and Swift to ~50 bursts and transients.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #2
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.