GOTO

GOTO (for Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer) is an array of optical telescopes at La Silla Observatory (LSO) in Australia and the Canary Islands, to follow up GW detections from Virgo and LIGO. It has a similar function and design to that of BlackGEM. Each site has 8 0.4-m telescopes mounted and pointed as a unit (UT for unit telescope), to offer a wide field of view, roughly 40 square degrees. It began operation in 2023 with such units at two sites, Siding Spring Observatory (SSO) in Australia (GOTO-South, aka GOTO-S) and Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) on the Canary Islands (GOTO-North, aka GOTO-N). Considerable software is used to identify optical transients within the observation data. The array also follows up on reported gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

Note that GoTo is also the name of a standard for a type of telescope mounting and automatic control interface, e.g., for use with amateur astronomy telescopes. The term GoTo telescope is often used to refer to telescopes with such a mounting.