BAT Slew Survey
Subtitle: Slew Data Analysis for the Swift-BAT Coded Aperture Imaging Telescope
Contributors: Grindlay, Jonathan E.; Stubbs, Christopher; Schwartz, Matthew
Published: 2012
Language: eng
Description: The BAT Slew Survey (BATSS) is the first wide-field survey of the hard X-ray sky (15–150 keV) with a slewing coded aperture imaging telescope. Its fine time resolution, high sensitivity and large sky coverage make it particularly well-suited for detections of transient sources with variability timescales in the ∼1 sec–1 hour range, such as Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), flaring stars and Blazars. As implemented, BATSS observations are found to be consistently more sensitive than their BAT pointing-mode counterparts, by an average of 20% over the 10 sec–3 ksec exposure range, due to intrinsic systematic differences between them. The survey's motivation, development and implementation are presented, including a description of the software and hardware infrastructure that made this effort possible.
Notes: Keywords: Coded Aperture Imaging, Gamma-Ray Bursts, Hard X-ray surveys, High-Energy Astrophysics.

Thesis Ph.D. Harvard University 2012