BlackGEM

BlackGEM is a planned array of optical telescopes located at the La Silla astronomical observatory in Chile. This system is specifically designed to detect the optical counterparts from gravitational wave sources detected with Virgo and LIGO.

The BlackGEM array will consist of 10-15 telescopes each 65 cm in diameter. This configuration uniquely allows the pointing of the combined telescope to be matched to the often elongated ellipse shaped source-location estimates provided by gravitational wave detectors. Once an optical counterpart has been detected all telescopes are pointed directly at the target giving a light collecting area and sensitivity equivalent to that of a single 3.5 m telescope but with a larger two square degree field of view.

Each telescope is equipped with a 10000 by 10000 pixel CCD with 9 micron pixel size that samples the full focal plane of the telescope. This, combined with the (f/5.5) focal length of the telescope, means that the angular resolution of the instrument is limited only by the seeing (which is about 1" at La Silla). Therefore enabling spectroscopic follow up of any detected gravitational wave source with for instance the nearby Very Large Telescope.

In the first phase (early 2017), the array will consist of 3 telescopes of 2.7 square degrees field of view each, later to be extended to more units with a total field of view of 40 square degrees. This also makes the BlackGEM array a very good survey instrument. The first phase of operations will therefore perform a complete survey of the southern sky. In parallel to this phase, multi-epoch imaging will give a characterization of any fast (shorter than one day) transient sources down to 23rd magnitude. In parallel, the BlackGEM array will act on triggers from the gravitational wave detectors to look for optical emission from such events as merging black holes and neutron stars.

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