139 research outputs found
The Current State of Business Intelligence in Academia: The Arrival of Big Data
In December 2012, the AIS Special Interest Group on Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management Systems (SIGDSS) and the Teradata University Network (TUN) cosponsored the Business Intelligence Congress 3 and conducted surveys to assess academia’s response to the growing market need for students with Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) skill sets. This panel report describes the key findings and best practices that were identified, with an emphasis on what has changed since the BI Congress efforts in 2009 and 2010. The article also serves as a “call to action” for universities regarding the need to respond to emerging market needs in BI/BA, including “Big Data.” The IS field continues to be well positioned to be the leader in creating the next generation BI/BA workforce. To do so, we believe that IS leaders need to continuously refine BI/BA curriculum to keep pace with the turbulent BI/BA marketplace
The ROTSE-III Robotic Telescope System
The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB990123 convincingly
demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a
program of rapid follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts, the Robotic
Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next-generation
instrument, ROTSE-III, that will continue the search for fast optical
transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to
be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system
components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount,
enclosure, environmental sensing & protection and data acquisition. Each is
described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful
in similar contexts elsewhere.Comment: 19 pages, including 4 figures. To be published in PASP in January,
2003. PASP Number IP02-11
The Dark Side of ROTSE-III Prompt GRB Observations
We present several cases of optical observations during gamma-ray bursts
(GRBs) which resulted in prompt limits but no detection of optical emission.
These limits constrain the prompt optical flux densities and the optical
brightness relative to the gamma-ray emission. The derived constraints fall
within the range of properties observed in GRBs with prompt optical detections,
though at the faint end of optical/gamma flux ratios. The presently accessible
prompt optical limits do not require a different set of intrinsic or
environmental GRB properties, relative to the events with prompt optical
detections.Comment: ApJ accepted. 20 pages in draft manuscript form, which includes 6
pages of tables and 2 figure
The ROTSE-IIIa Telescope System
We report on the current operating status of the ROTSE-IIIa telescope,
currently undergoing testing at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico.
It will be shipped to Siding Spring Observatory, Australia, in first quarter
2002. ROTSE-IIIa has been in automated observing mode since early October,
2001, after completing several weeks of calibration and check-out observations.
Calibrated lists of objects in ROTSE-IIIa sky patrol data are produced
routinely in an automated pipeline, and we are currently automating analysis
procedures to compile these lists, eliminate false detections, and
automatically identify transient and variable objects. The manual application
of these procedures has already led to the detection of a nova that rose over
six magnitudes in two days to a maximum detected brightness of m_R~13.9 and
then faded two magnitudes in two weeks. We also readily identify variable
stars, includings those suspected to be variables from the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey. We report on our system to allow public monitoring of the telescope
operational status in real time over the WWW.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publication in the proceedings of
``Gamma-Ray Burst and Afterglow Astronomy 2001: A Workshop Celebrating the
First Year of the HETE Mission'
Status of the ROTSE-III telescope network
ROTSE-III is a homogeneous worldwide array of 4 robotic telescopes. They were designed to provide optical observations of γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglows as close as possible to the start of γ-ray emission. ROTSE-III is fulfilling its potential for GRB science, and provides optical observations for a variety of astrophysical sources in the interim between GRB events
The Anomalous Early Afterglow of GRB 050801
The ROTSE-IIIc telescope at the H.E.S.S. site, Namibia, obtained the earliest
detection of optical emission from a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB), beginning only 21.8
s from the onset of Swift GRB 050801. The optical lightcurve does not fade or
brighten significantly over the first ~250 s, after which there is an
achromatic break and the lightcurve declines in typical power-law fashion. The
Swift/XRT also obtained early observations starting at 69 s after the burst
onset. The X-ray lightcurve shows the same features as the optical lightcurve.
These correlated variations in the early optical and X-ray emission imply a
common origin in space and time. This behavior is difficult to reconcile with
the standard models of early afterglow emission.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
The Early Optical Afterglow of GRB 030418 and Progenitor Mass Loss
The ROTSE-IIIa telescope and the SSO 40 inch (1.0 m) telescope, both located at Siding Spring Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030418. In this report, we present observations of the early afterglow, first detected by the ROTSE-IIIa telescope 211 s after the start of the burst and only 76 s after the end of the gamma-ray activity. We detect optical emission that rises for ∼600 s, slowly varies around R = 17.3 mag for ∼1400 s, and then fades as a power law of index α = -1.36. Additionally, the ROTSE-IIIb telescope, located at McDonald Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030723. The behavior of this light curve was qualitatively similar to that of GRB 030418, but 2 mag dimmer. These two afterglows are dissimilar to other afterglows such as GRB 990123 and GRB 021211. We investigate whether or not the early afterglow can be attributed to a synchrotron break in a cooling synchrotron spectrum as it passes through the optical band, but we find that this model is unable to accurately describe the early light curve. We present a simple model for gamma-ray burst emission emerging from a wind medium surrounding a massive progenitor star. This model provides an effective description of the data and suggests that the rise of the afterglow can be ascribed to extinction in the local circumburst environment. In this interpretation, these events provide further evidence of the connection between gamma-ray bursts and the collapse of massive stars.This work has been supported by NASA grants NAG5-
5281 and F006794, NSF grants AST 01-19685 and 01-05221,
the Australian Research Council, the University of New South
Wales, and the University of Michigan. Work performed at
LANL is supported by NASA SR&T through Department of
Energy (DOE) contract W-7405-ENG-36 and through internal
LDRD funding
The early optical afterglow of GRB 030418 and progenitor mass loss
The ROTSE-IIIa telescope and the SSO 40 inch (1.0 m) telescope, both located at Siding Spring Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030418. In this report, we present observations of the early afterglow, first detected by the ROTSE-IIIa telescope 211 s after the start of the burst and only 76 s after the end of the gamma-ray activity. We detect optical emission that rises for ∼600 s, slowly varies around R = 17.3 mag for ∼1400 s, and then fades as a power law of index α = -1.36. Additionally, the ROTSE-IIIb telescope, located at McDonald Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030723. The behavior of this light curve was qualitatively similar to that of GRB 030418, but 2 mag dimmer. These two afterglows are dissimilar to other afterglows such as GRB 990123 and GRB 021211. We investigate whether or not the early afterglow can be attributed to a synchrotron break in a cooling synchrotron spectrum as it passes through the optical band, but we find that this model is unable to accurately describe the early light curve. We present a simple model for gamma-ray burst emission emerging from a wind medium surrounding a massive progenitor star. This model provides an effective description of the data and suggests that the rise of the afterglow can be ascribed to extinction in the local circumburst environment. In this interpretation, these events provide further evidence of the connection between gamma-ray bursts and the collapse of massive stars
GRB 081008: from burst to afterglow and the transition phase in between
We present a multi-wavelength study of GRB 081008, at redshift 1.967, by
Swift, ROTSE-III and GROND. Compared to other Swift GRBs, GRB 081008 has a
typical gamma-ray isotropic equivalent energy output (10^53 erg) during the
prompt phase, and displayed two temporally separated clusters of pulses. The
early X-ray emission seen by the Swift/XRT was dominated by the softening tail
of the prompt emission, producing multiple flares during and after the
Swift/BAT detections. Optical observations that started shortly after the first
active phase of gamma-ray emission showed two consecutive peaks. We interpret
the first optical peak as the onset of the afterglow associated with the early
burst activities. A second optical peak, coincident with the later gamma-ray
pulses, imposes a small modification to the otherwise smooth lightcurve and
thus suggests a minimal contribution from a probable internal component. We
suggest the early optical variability may be from continuous energy injection
into the forward shock front by later shells producing the second epoch of
burst activities. These early observations thus provide a potential probe for
the transition from prompt to the afterglow phase. The later lightcurve of GRB
081008 displays a smooth steepening in all optical bands and X-ray. The
temporal break is consistent with being achromatic at the observed wavelengths.
Our broad energy coverage shortly after the break constrains a spectral break
within optical. However, the evolution of the break frequency is not observed.
We discuss the plausible interpretations of this behavior.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Looking Into the Fireball: ROTSE-III and Swift Observations of Early GRB Afterglows
We report on a complete set of early optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts
(GRBs) obtained with the ROTSE-III telescope network from March 2005 through
June 2007. This set is comprised of 12 afterglows with early optical and
Swift/XRT observations, with a median ROTSE-III response time of 45 s after the
start of gamma-ray emission (8 s after the GCN notice time). These afterglows
span four orders of magnitude in optical luminosity, and the contemporaneous
X-ray detections allow multi-wavelength spectral analysis. Excluding X-ray
flares, the broadband synchrotron spectra show that the optical and X-ray
emission originate in a common region, consistent with predictions of the
external forward shock in the fireball model. However, the fireball model is
inadequate to predict the temporal decay indices of the early afterglows, even
after accounting for possible long-duration continuous energy injection. We
find that the optical afterglow is a clean tracer of the forward shock, and we
use the peak time of the forward shock to estimate the initial bulk Lorentz
factor of the GRB outflow, and find 100<Gamma_0<1000, consistent with
expectations.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Ap
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