Followup Observations in the Swift Era S. R. Kulkarni California Institute of Technology

New at Palomar Palomar 60-inch now automated Goal: Produce uniform set of light curves Fox (Project Scientist), Harrison & Kulkarni (PI) CCD + filter wheel (focus on I, z bands) 20% Caltech Community (only Q scheduled) 10% IPAC (Q scheduled; Data Pipeline and Archive) 70% GRB Team (all TOO) Palomar 24-inch robotic telescope Brown (PI); First light April % SRK CCD + filter wheel

Radio Followup Will there be sufficient resources? Need radio light curves for many bursts (ordinary and otherwise) But, few radio facilities (cf optical facilities) Our large VLA/BeppoSAX Large program: 1hr/day >> Suggest aggressive WSRT & ATCA program Radio monitoring would be useful (especially for supernovae and other transients) refurbish old facilities? e.g. 40-m OVRO telescope linkup with JPL DSN upgrade project?

First few months: Shared Risk Maintain transparency View community at large as volunteers to help out the project Astronomers understand error radii, stochastic and systematic errors Rough fluences and fluxes should be a part and parcel of every event

Routine Operations An impressive number of followup facilities have been organized in response to Swift. - Robotic Telescopes - Large Telescope Key projects - Existing Networks are ready to go Host galaxy studies will lag other studies. This is not a major issue.

Followup Architecture Plan A: Swift project spearheads followup. Organization of such a large followup program is logistically hard. Plan B: GCN as the central clearing house. Assumes organic growth of community based efforts. Swift sold as community mission. >> Suggest a workshop in Spring.

Swift Response: My view Have a default X-ray/UVOT observing sequence Helps the community plan followup Uniform data sets will be one of the legacies of Swift Exceptions to be made for exceptional bursts Announce these via GCN.

Advice to Team Please publish Swift-specific papers rapidly Obviously morale booster for team Energizes community to respond with followup papers Publish Swift catalog every six months This will drive synthesis studies