Introducing the Zwicky Transient Facility and the Be star variability program: a progress report at the National Central University

C-C Ngeow,V Z Golkhou,T Kupfer,F Masci,R Laher,C-D Lee,P-C Yu

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1231/1/012010

Abstract

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a modern-day wide-field optical survey to systematically explore the transient and variable sky. The ZTF utilizes the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope located at the Palomar Observatory. This telescope is equipped with a mosaic CCD camera that provides a field of view of 47 squared degrees. The allocated observing time of ZTF can be divided into partnership time (40%), public time (40%) and Caltech time (20%). The public time contains two surveys: a 3-day cadence for the Northern Sky Survey and a 1-day cadence for the Galactic Plane Survey. Astronomical communities in South East Asian countries are encouraged to explore the public ZTF data once it is released in March 2019. Taiwan’s National Central University (NCU) is one of the partnered institutions, and a major ZTF-related project carried out at NCU is the ZTF Be stars variability (ZTF-BeV) program. The main goal of our program is to study the variability of Be stars in the range of ∼13.5 to ∼20.5 magnitudes.

Highlights

The 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope or P48 Telescope, located at the Palomar Observatory, has a preeminent history in sky surveys. These imaging surveys ranged from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) in mid-20th century, to the POSS II Survey in late 1980s, and to the Palomar Transient
In this article, we briefly introduce the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey with an aim to promote ZTF to the broader astronomical community within South East Asian countries
ZTF contains two public surveys, the Northern Sky Survey and the Galactic Plane Survey, for which the data will be publicly available in March 2019 with sequential annual releases

Summary

IOP Publishing

C-C Ngeow1,*, C-D Lee, P-C Yu1, F Masci, R Laher, T Kupfer and V Z Golkhou on behalf of the ZTF Collaboration. 93106, USA 4Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA 5DIRAC Institute, Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. 98195, USA 6The eScience Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA 7Moore-Sloan, WRF Innovation in Data Science, and DIRAC Fellow

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