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

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.