Speaker
Description
The purpose of the Infra-Red Telescope (IRT) on board THESEUS is to identify, localize and characterize astrophysical transient sources and in particular the afterglows of the Gamma-ray Bursts detected by the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) and the X and Gamma Imaging Spectrometer (XGIS) on board THESEUS. The Infra-Red Telescope is a 0.7 m class telescope observing in the 0.7 – 1.8 microns band, with both imaging and moderate resolution spectroscopy capabilities in the 0.8-1.6 microns band. The camera includes 5 filters to estimate on-board the redshift of the source with a photo-Z imaging technique, as well as a grism to perform spectroscopy of the brightest sources. The focal plane assembly includes a Teledyne H2RG detector read out by SIDECAR front-end electronics. The detector area of 2048 x 2048 pixels is used to include both the photometry field of view of 15 arcmin x 15 arcmin, and a separate area for the spectral dispersion information. Outside the camera, images are analysed to localise in real time the transient source by using an on-board astrometry algorithm.