The Infra-Red Telescope (IRT) on board the THESEUS mission

Infrared emission from gravitational wave sources with THESEUS/IRT

With the discovery of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational wave source GW170817 the multi-messenger era is started. The identification of an electromagnetic counterpart is crucial to understand the nature of the detected gravitational wave sources and to maximize the scientific return of their detections. The role of the instrument THESEUS/IRT will be crucial in this field, in particular in localizing afterglows of gamma-ray bursts within few minutes from the trigger and in identifying optical/NIR isotropic emissions such as kilonovae.

GRB follow-up and science with THESEUS/IRT

The aim of the space mission concept \theseus~is to continue to collect and study the GRB events like \swift. It will allow us to study the early Universe. Moreover, it will offer us to study with unprecedented sensitivity GRB emission and to measure the redshift for the bursts with $z>5$. In this work, we investigate the advantages of a optical and near-infrared telescope mounted on the same satellite that is triggered by the GRB like \theseus/IRT. Afterwards, we investigate the possible future developments in the GRB science, first for the prompt phase and the for afterglow phase. We find th…

THESEUS任务中的红外望远镜（IRT）

The IRT Telescope on board the THESEUS mission

介绍THESEUS任务中的IRT望远镜，它是0.7米级，能在特定波段和视场成像及提供光谱，目标是识别GRB近红外对应体、测量光度红移并及时传至地面，便于大型望远镜后续观测，源亮时还能进行光谱分析。

The Infra-Red Telescope on board the THESEUS mission

The Infra-Red Telescope (IRT) on board the Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) ESA M5 candidate mission will play a key role in identifying and characterizing moderate to high redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts afterglows. The IRT is the enabling instrument on board THESEUS for measuring autonomously the redshift of the several hundreds of GRBs detected per year by the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) and the X- and Gamma-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (XGIS), and thus allowing the big ground based telescopes to be triggered on a redshift pre-selected sample, and finally fulfilling the cos…

The X/Gamma-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XGIS) on-board THESEUS: design, main characteristics, and concept of operation

THESEUS is one of the three missions selected by ESA as fifth medium class mission (M5) candidates in its Cosmic Vision science program, currently under assessment in a phase A study with a planned launch date in 2032. THESEUS is designed to carry on-board two wide and deep sky monitoring instruments for X/gamma-ray transients detection: a wide-field soft X-ray monitor with imaging capability (Soft X-ray Imager, SXI, 0.3 - 5 keV), a hard X-ray, partially-imaging spectroscopic instrument (X and Gamma Imaging Spectrometer, XGIS, 2 keV - 10 MeV), and an optical/near-IR telescope with both imaging…

Time Domain Astronomy with the THESEUS Satellite

THESEUS is a medium size space mission of the European Space Agency, currently under evaluation for a possible launch in 2032. Its main objectives are to investigate the early Universe through the observation of gamma-ray bursts and to study the gravitational waves electromagnetic counterparts and neutrino events. On the other hand, its instruments, which include a wide field of view X-ray (0.3-5 keV) telescope based on lobster-eye focusing optics and a gamma-ray spectrometer with imaging capabilities in the 2-150 keV range, are also ideal for carrying out unprecedented studies in time domain …