Time-domain surveys can exchange sky coverage for revisit frequency, complicating the comparison of their relative capabilities. By using different revisit intervals, a specific camera may execute ...surveys optimized for discovery of different classes of transient objects. We propose a new figure of merit, the instantaneous volumetric survey speed, for evaluating transient surveys. This metric defines the trade between cadence interval and snapshot survey volume and so provides a natural means of comparing survey capability. The related metric of areal survey speed imposes a constraint on the range of possible revisit times: we show that many modern time-domain surveys are limited by the amount of fresh sky available each night. We introduce the concept of "spectroscopic accessibility" and discuss its importance for transient science goals requiring followup observing. We present an extension of the control time algorithm for cases where multiple consecutive detections are required. Finally, we explore how survey speed and choice of cadence interval determine the detection rate of transients in the peak absolute magnitude-decay timescale phase space.
The Zwicky Transient Facility: Surveys and Scheduler Bellm, Eric C.; Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Barlow, Tom ...
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
06/2019, Letnik:
131, Številka:
1000
Journal Article
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We present a novel algorithm for scheduling the observations of time-domain imaging surveys. Our integer linear programming approach optimizes an observing plan for an entire night by assigning ...targets to temporal blocks, enabling strict control of the number of exposures obtained per field and minimizing filter changes. A subsequent optimization step minimizes slew times between each observation. Our optimization metric self-consistently weights contributions from time-varying airmass, seeing, and sky brightness to maximize the transient discovery rate. We describe the implementation of this algorithm on the surveys of the Zwicky Transient Facility and present its on-sky performance.
The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives Graham, Matthew J.; Barbarino, Cristina; Blagorodnova, Nadejda ...
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
07/2019, Letnik:
131, Številka:
1001
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public-private enterprise, is a new time-domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg2 field of view and an ...8 second readout time. It is well positioned in the development of time-domain astronomy, offering operations at 10% of the scale and style of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) with a single 1-m class survey telescope. The public surveys will cover the observable northern sky every three nights in g and r filters and the visible Galactic plane every night in g and r. Alerts generated by these surveys are sent in real time to brokers. A consortium of universities that provided funding ("partnership") are undertaking several boutique surveys. The combination of these surveys producing one million alerts per night allows for exploration of transient and variable astrophysical phenomena brighter than r ∼ 20.5 on timescales of minutes to years. We describe the primary science objectives driving ZTF, including the physics of supernovae and relativistic explosions, multi-messenger astrophysics, supernova cosmology, active galactic nuclei, and tidal disruption events, stellar variability, and solar system objects.
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a new optical time-domain survey that uses the Palomar 48 inch Schmidt telescope. A custom-built wide-field camera provides a 47 deg2 field of view and 8 s ...readout time, yielding more than an order of magnitude improvement in survey speed relative to its predecessor survey, the Palomar Transient Factory. We describe the design and implementation of the camera and observing system. The ZTF data system at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center provides near-real-time reduction to identify moving and varying objects. We outline the analysis pipelines, data products, and associated archive. Finally, we present on-sky performance analysis and first scientific results from commissioning and the early survey. ZTF's public alert stream will serve as a useful precursor for that of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey generates real-time alerts for optical transients, variables, and moving objects discovered in its wide-field survey. We describe the ZTF alert stream ...distribution and processing (filtering) system. The system uses existing open-source technologies developed in industry: Kafka, a real-time streaming platform, and Avro, a binary serialization format. The technologies used in this system provide a number of advantages for the ZTF use case, including (1) built-in replication, scalability, and stream rewind for the distribution mechanism; (2) structured messages with strictly enforced schemas and dynamic typing for fast parsing; and (3) a Python-based stream processing interface that is similar to batch for a familiar and user-friendly plug-in filter system, all in a modular, primarily containerized system. The production deployment has successfully supported streaming up to 1.2 million alerts or roughly 70 GB of data per night, with each alert available to a consumer within about 10 s of alert candidate production. Data transfer rates of about 80,000 alerts/minute have been observed. In this paper, we discuss this alert distribution and processing system, the design motivations for the technology choices for the framework, performance in production, and how this system may be generally suitable for other alert stream use cases, including the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a new robotic time-domain survey currently in progress using the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt Telescope. ZTF uses a 47 square degree field with a 600 megapixel ...camera to scan the entire northern visible sky at rates of ∼3760 square degrees/hour to median depths of g ∼ 20.8 and r ∼ 20.6 mag (AB, 5 in 30 sec). We describe the Science Data System that is housed at IPAC, Caltech. This comprises the data-processing pipelines, alert production system, data archive, and user interfaces for accessing and analyzing the products. The real-time pipeline employs a novel image-differencing algorithm, optimized for the detection of point-source transient events. These events are vetted for reliability using a machine-learned classifier and combined with contextual information to generate data-rich alert packets. The packets become available for distribution typically within 13 minutes (95th percentile) of observation. Detected events are also linked to generate candidate moving-object tracks using a novel algorithm. Objects that move fast enough to streak in the individual exposures are also extracted and vetted. We present some preliminary results of the calibration performance delivered by the real-time pipeline. The reconstructed astrometric accuracy per science image with respect to Gaia DR1 is typically 45 to 85 milliarcsec. This is the RMS per-axis on the sky for sources extracted with photometric S/N ≥ 10 and hence corresponds to the typical astrometric uncertainty down to this limit. The derived photometric precision (repeatability) at bright unsaturated fluxes varies between 8 and 25 millimag. The high end of these ranges corresponds to an airmass approaching ∼2-the limit of the public survey. Photometric calibration accuracy with respect to Pan-STARRS1 is generally better than 2%. The products support a broad range of scientific applications: fast and young supernovae; rare flux transients; variable stars; eclipsing binaries; variability from active galactic nuclei; counterparts to gravitational wave sources; a more complete census of Type Ia supernovae; and solar-system objects.
Colors of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the first few days after explosion provide a potential discriminant between different models. In this paper, we present g − r colors of 65 SNe Ia discovered ...within 5 days from first light by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2018, a sample that is about three times larger than that in the literature. We find that g − r colors are intrinsically rather homogeneous at early phases, with about half of the dispersion attributable to photometric uncertainties ( 0.18 mag). Colors are nearly constant starting from 6 days after first light (g − r ∼ −0.15 mag), while the time evolution at earlier epochs is characterized by a continuous range of slopes, from events rapidly transitioning from redder to bluer colors (slope of ∼−0.25 mag day−1) to events with a flatter evolution. The continuum in the slope distribution is in good agreement both with models requiring some amount of 56Ni mixed in the outermost regions of the ejecta and with "double-detonation" models having thin helium layers ( ) and varying carbon-oxygen core masses. At the same time, six events show evidence for a distinctive "red bump" signature predicted by double-detonation models with larger helium masses. We finally identify a significant correlation between the early-time g − r slopes and supernova brightness, with brighter events associated to flatter color evolution (p-value = 0.006). The distribution of slopes, however, is consistent with being drawn from a single population, with no evidence for two components as claimed in the literature based on B − V colors.
While tidal disruption events (TDEs) have long been heralded as laboratories for the study of quiescent black holes, the small number of known TDEs and uncertainties in their emission mechanism have ...hindered progress toward this promise. Here we present 17 new TDEs that have been detected recently by the Zwicky Transient Facility along with Swift UV and X-ray follow-up observations. Our homogeneous analysis of the optical/UV light curves, including 22 previously known TDEs from the literature, reveals a clean separation of light-curve properties with spectroscopic class. The TDEs with Bowen fluorescence features in their optical spectra have smaller blackbody radii, lower optical luminosities, and higher disruption rates compared to the rest of the sample. The small subset of TDEs that show only helium emission lines in their spectra have the longest rise times, the highest luminosities, and the lowest rates. A high detection rate of Bowen lines in TDEs with small photometric radii could be explained by the high density that is required for this fluorescence mechanism. The stellar debris can provide a source for this dense material. Diffusion of photons through this debris may explain why the rise and fade timescale of the TDEs in our sample are not correlated. We also report, for the first time, the detection of soft X-ray flares from a TDE on ∼day timescales. Based on the fact that the X-ray flares peak at a luminosity similar to the optical/UV blackbody luminosity, we attribute them to brief glimpses through a reprocessing layer that otherwise obscures the inner accretion flow.
Abstract
We present a systematic search for optical counterparts to 13 gravitational wave (GW) triggers involving at least one neutron star during LIGO/Virgo’s third observing run (O3). We searched ...binary neutron star (BNS) and neutron star black hole (NSBH) merger localizations with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and undertook follow-up with the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) collaboration. The GW triggers had a median localization area of 4480 deg
2
, a median distance of 267 Mpc, and false-alarm rates ranging from 1.5 to 10
−25
yr
−1
. The ZTF coverage in the
g
and
r
bands had a median enclosed probability of 39%, median depth of 20.8 mag, and median time lag between merger and the start of observations of 1.5 hr. The O3 follow-up by the GROWTH team comprised 340 UltraViolet/Optical/InfraRed (UVOIR) photometric points, 64 OIR spectra, and three radio images using 17 different telescopes. We find no promising kilonovae (radioactivity-powered counterparts), and we show how to convert the upper limits to constrain the underlying kilonova luminosity function. Initially, we assume that all GW triggers are bona fide astrophysical events regardless of false-alarm rate and that kilonovae accompanying BNS and NSBH mergers are drawn from a common population; later, we relax these assumptions. Assuming that all kilonovae are at least as luminous as the discovery magnitude of GW170817 (−16.1 mag), we calculate that our joint probability of detecting zero kilonovae is only 4.2%. If we assume that all kilonovae are brighter than −16.6 mag (the extrapolated peak magnitude of GW170817) and fade at a rate of 1 mag day
−1
(similar to GW170817), the joint probability of zero detections is 7%. If we separate the NSBH and BNS populations based on the online classifications, the joint probability of zero detections, assuming all kilonovae are brighter than −16.6 mag, is 9.7% for NSBH and 7.9% for BNS mergers. Moreover, no more than <57% (<89%) of putative kilonovae could be brighter than −16.6 mag assuming flat evolution (fading by 1 mag day
−1
) at the 90% confidence level. If we further take into account the online terrestrial probability for each GW trigger, we find that no more than <68% of putative kilonovae could be brighter than −16.6 mag. Comparing to model grids, we find that some kilonovae must have
M
ej
< 0.03
M
⊙
,
X
lan
> 10
−4
, or
ϕ
> 30° to be consistent with our limits. We look forward to searches in the fourth GW observing run; even 17 neutron star mergers with only 50% coverage to a depth of −16 mag would constrain the maximum fraction of bright kilonovae to <25%.
Spectroscopic detection of narrow emission lines traces the presence of circumstellar mass distributions around massive stars exploding as core-collapse supernovae. Transient emission lines ...disappearing shortly after the supernova explosion suggest that the material spatial extent is compact and implies an increased mass loss shortly prior to explosion. Here, we present a systematic survey for such transient emission lines (Flash Spectroscopy) among Type II supernovae detected in the first year of the Zwicky Transient Facility survey. We find that at least six out of ten events for which a spectrum was obtained within two days of the estimated explosion time show evidence for such transient flash lines. Our measured flash event fraction (>30% at 95% confidence level) indicates that elevated mass loss is a common process occurring in massive stars that are about to explode as supernovae.
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