COMPACT AUTOMATIC ASTRONOMICAL TELESCOPES AS GROUND-BASED SUPPORT OF SATELLITE PROJECTS

We outline the basic idea. of an automatically working telescope based on inexpensive commercially available hardware components. A new gene ration of the control software is proposed which makes the full remote control of the telescope via Internet network possible - without huma n factor. The main scientific goal is to provide quasisimultaneous opt ical data for gamma-ray satellite projects such as CGRO, HETE, INTEGRA L etc. The telescope will automatically investigate tile positions of high energy sources such as GRB and AGNs, at optical wavelengths. The automatically operated burst alert telescope is expected to improve ou r knowledge of these astrophysical objects. The proposed experiment is different from the OTM Optical Transient Monitor which is monitoring experiment unrelated to satellite data. The system can be also applied in other areas of astronomy and astrophysics as well as provide sky p atrol.