Continued Development and Growth of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network

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This award will provide continued support of Skynet, a web-based software suite for controlling many remote telescopes simultaneously. As part of this effort, the group at the University of North Carolina will continue to expand their network beyond the original PROMPT telescopes, an array of six fully automated telescopes located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, into a larger system with telescopes on several continents. This network will be used to support observations of gamma-ray bursts and other transient and time-variable phenomena. The project is expected to have a significant impact on time domain astronomy. The leaders of this project also envision outreach to tens of thousands of citizen scientists and members of the general public.