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Published July 2019 | Version Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives

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Abstract

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 deg^2 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.

Additional Information

© 2019 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2018 September 6; accepted 2019 January 21; published 2019 May 22. Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin 48-inch Telescope and the 60-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project, a scientific collaboration among the California Institute of Technology, the Oskar Klein Centre, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the TANGO Program of the University System of Taiwan. Further support is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1440341. J. Sollerman acknowledges support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. E. Ofek is grateful for support by a grant from the Israeli Ministry of Science, ISF, Minerva, BSF, BSF transformative program, and the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1829/12). A. Gal-Yam is supported by the EU via ERC grant No. 725161, the Quantum Universe I-Core program, the ISF, the BSF Transformative program and by a Kimmel award. S. Gezari is supported in part by NSF CAREER grant 1454816 and NSF AAG grant 1616566. C.-K. Chang, W.-H. Ip, C.-D. Lee, Z.-Y. Lin, C.-C. Ngeow, and P.-C. Yu thank the funding from Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan) under grant 104-2923-M-008-004-MY5, 104-2112-M-008-014-MY3, 105-2112-M-008-002-MY3, 106-2811-M-008-081, and 106-2112-M-008-007. M. Bulla and A. Goobar acknowledge support from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and the Swedish National Space Board. E. Bellm, B. Bolin, A. Connolly, V. Z. Golkhou, D. Huppenkothen, Z. Ivezić L. Jones, M. Juric, and M. Patterson acknowledge support from the University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Astronomy, and the DIRAC Institute. University of Washington's DIRAC Institute is supported through generous gifts from the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, and the Washington Research Foundation. M. Juric and A. Connolly acknowledge the support of the Washington Research Foundation Data Science Term Chair fund, and the UW Provost's Initiative in Data-Intensive Discovery. E. Bellm, A. Connolly, Z. Ivezić L. Jones, M. Juric, and M. Patterson acknowledge support from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is supported in part by the National Science Foundation through Cooperative Agreement 1258333 managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), and the Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515 with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Additional LSST funding comes from private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support from LSSTC Institutional Members. B.T. Bolin acknowledges funding for the Asteroid Institute program provided by B612 Foundation, W.K. Bowes Jr. Foundation, P. Rawls Family Fund, and two anonymous donors in addition to general support from the B612 Founding Circle. M.T. Soumagnac acknowledges support by a grant from IMOS/ISA, the Ilan Ramon fellowship from the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology and the Benoziyo center for Astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. A. A. Miller is funded by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation in support of the Data Science Fellowship Program. J. Bauer, T. Farnham, and M. Kelley gratefully acknowledge the NASA/University of Maryland/MPC Augmentation through the NASA Planetary Data System Cooperative Agreement NNX16AB16A. M. M. Kasliwal and Q.-Z. Ye acknowledge support by the GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) project funded by the National Science Foundation PIRE (Partnership in International Research and Education) program under Grant No 1545949. A. A. Mahabal acknowledges support from the following grants: NSF AST-1749235, NSF-1640818, and NASA 16-ADAP16-0232. M. W. Coughlin is supported by the David and Ellen Lee Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. S. Ghosh acknowledges the NSF award PHY-1607585. M. Rigault acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 759194—USNAC). Facilities: PO:1.2 m - , PO:1.5m -.

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Submitted - 1902.01945.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
92892
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20190213-135514906

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.01945 (URL)

Funding

NSF
AST-1440341
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
Ministry of Science (Israel)
Israel Science Foundation
1829/12
MINERVA (Israel)
Binational Science Foundation (USA-Israel)
I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee
European Research Council (ERC)
725161
Kimmel Award
NSF
AST-1454816
NSF
AST-1616566
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
104-2923-M-008-004-MY5
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
104-2112-M-008-014-MY3
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
105-2112-M-008-002-MY3
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
106-2811-M-008-081
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
106-2112-M-008-007
Swedish Research Council
Swedish National Space Board (SNSB)
University of Washington
DIRAC Institute
Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences
Washington Research Foundation
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
NSF
AST-1258333
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)
Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-AC02-76SF00515
B612 Foundation
W. K. Bowes Jr. Foundation
P. Rawls Family Fund
IMOS/ISA
Weizmann Institute of Science
NASA
NNX16AB16A
NSF
AST-1545949
NSF
AST-1749235
NSF
OAC-1640818
NASA
16-ADAP16-0232
David and Ellen Lee Postdoctoral Scholarship
NSF
PHY-1607585
European Research Council (ERC)
759194

Dates

Created
2019-02-13
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Zwicky Transient Facility, Astronomy Department, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)