Recent GRBs observed with the 1.23m CAHA telescope and the status of its upgrade

We report on optical observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) followed up by our collaboration with the 1.23m telescope located at the Calar Alto observatory. The 1.23m telescope is an old facility, currently undergoing upgrades to enable fully autonomous response to GRB alerts. We discuss the current status of the control system upgrade of the 1.23m telescope. The upgrade is being done by our group based on the Remote Telescope System, 2nd Version (RTS2), which controls the available instruments and interacts with the EPICS database of Calar Alto. (Our group is called ARAE (Robotic Astronomy & High-Energy Astrophysics) and is based on members of IAA (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía). Currently the ARAE group is responsible to develop the BOOTES network of robotic telescopes (Jelínek et al. 2009).) Currently the telescope can run fully autonomously or under observer supervision using RTS2. The fast reaction response mode for GRB reaction (typically with response times below 3 minutes from the GRB onset) still needs some development and testing. The telescope is usually operated in legacy interactive mode, with periods of supervised autonomous runs under RTS2. We show the preliminary results of several GRBs followed up with observer intervention during the testing phase of the 1.23m control software upgrade. Copyright © 2010 Javier Gorosabel et al.The research of J. Gorosabel, A.J. Castro-Tirado, R. Cunniffe and M. Jelinek is supported by the Spanish programmes AYA2008-03467/ESP, AYA2009-14000-C03-01, and AYA2007-63677. We are very grateful to all of the CAHA staff and in particular to Ulli Thiele for his excellent support with the 1.23m telescope. P. Kubanek would like to acknowledge generous financial support provided by Spanish Programa de Ayudas FPI del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Subprograma FPI-MICINN) and European Fondo Social Europeo.Peer Reviewe