Time-domain astrophysics with the gravitational wave optical transient observer

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Warwick leads the Gravitational wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) project, which is the UK's premier wide-field sky-survey, aimed at discovering the electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave events. The project employs autonomous arrays of wide-field telescopes situated at two locations (La Palma, and Australia), that can patrol the sky regularly and respond to events of interest. While its main focus is to hunt for visible light signatures in response to gravitational wave detections, the projects offers a broad array of time-domain and transient science. Its design is particularly well suited to search for rare and rapidly evolving events. Objects of interest can then be fed to other telescopes for further characterisation and follow-up. The Phd research covers some instrumentation and control system work, high data-rate image reductions, sophisticated automated classification methods and science exploitation of a variety of sources such as neutron star mergers, supernovae, fast transients, counterparts to high-energy events etc. The work is within a larger team that includes other consortium members.