The Liverpool Telescope is a 2.0 metre unmanned fully robotic telescope at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos on the Canary island of La Palma. It is owned and operated by Liverpool John Moores University, with financial support from STFC.
1530 GMT 12th January 2012
A long-term photometric monitoring study by the LT was recently used to unveil the nature of the accretion flow and jet connection of a distant active galactic nucleus (AGN) for the first time.
AGNs generate spectacular X-ray, ultraviolet (UV) and optical continuum luminosities by matter accretion onto their central rotating supermassive black holes. However, the precise geometry and origin of this huge energy production is still largely unknown, and direct spatial resolution of the emitting regions from such objects is not currently possible. Fortunately, there is a time-domain technique to probe the accretion physics for AGNs. This is the so-called "continuum reverberation" (or echo) mapping, which relies on the analysis of time-delayed responses of different continuum emitting regions to original fluctuations in a driving source. [more]
Artist's impression of thermal GRB. Credit: A. Simonnet, NASA
1800 GMT 30th November 2011
The Liverpool Telescope (LT) recently played an important role in the discovery of a new type of gamma-ray burst, as revealed in a new paper published in Nature this week (Thöne et al, Nature, 480, 72-74, 2011).
On Christmas Day 2010 a peculiar GRB occurred, designated GRB101225A (after the date of its discovery), also nicknamed “The Christmas Burst”. It lasted more than half an hour, much longer than most GRBs detected so far. Its low‑energy emission (i.e. all radiation measured below the gamma-ray regime) was dominated by a strong thermal component ‑ a classical black-body spectrum ‑ while all other GRBs are dominated by synchrotron radiation. [more]
Draconid meteor train, composite of 10 frames.
1200 BST 14th October 2011
Geert Barentsen of Armagh Observatory recently used the LT to monitor the radiant of the Draconid meteor shower with RISE as the Earth flew through a particularly dense part of the meteor stream. While a sharp peak in the number of meteors was seen for a couple of hours by observers in Europe and Asia, the LT's 20°-field-of-view SkycamT also recorded many meteors, most notably a bright fireball resulting in a spectacular ionisation train which persisted for at least nine minutes. [more]
1700 BST 26 August 2011
Late on 24th August UK time, the LT responded automatically to an alert that a supernova had exploded in nearby galaxy M101, 26 million light years away. The object was detected on 24th August as part of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) sky survey. Mark Sullivan (University of Oxford) triggered the LT observations as part of a collaboration between LJMU and Oxford. After receiving the email alert he used the LT's Phase 2 User Interface on his laptop to submit a set of observations for consideration by the LT's autonomous robotic scheduler. Minutes afterwards, the scheduler decided by itself to perform these observations. Under an hour after receiving the email alert, Mark had his data.... [more]
