Jordan Camp, Scott D. Barthelmy, Lindy Blackburn, Kenneth Carpenter, Neil Gehrels, Jonah Kanner, Frank E. Marshall, Judith L. Racusin, Takanori Sakamoto
The International Space Station offers a unique platform for rapid and inexpensive deployment of space telescopes. A scientific opportunity of great potential later this decade is the use of telescopes for the electromagnetic follow-up of ground-based gravitational wave detections of neutron star and black hole mergers. We describe this possibility for OpTIIX, an ISS technology demonstration of a 1.5 m diffraction limited optical telescope assembled in space, and ISS-Lobster, a wide-field imaging X-ray telescope now under study as a potential NASA mission. Both telescopes will be mounted on pointing platforms, allowing rapid positioning to the source of a gravitational wave event. Electromagnetic follow-up rates of several per year appear likely, offering a wealth of complementary science on the mergers of black holes and neutron stars.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3705
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