Simultaneous Observations of the Northern TESS Sectors by the Zwicky Transient Facility

Abstract

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) (Schliegel 2017) is a powerful facility for studying a broad range of astrophysical objects. The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) (Bellm et al. 2019; Graham et al. 2019; Masci et al. 2019) is conducting a nightly public survey of all 13 TESS northern sectors in 2019–2020. ZTF will observe the portions of the current TESS sector visible from Palomar Observatory each night. Each ZTF pointing will have one exposure each with g and r filters, totaling two images per night. The first northern sector, Sector 14, was observed from 2019 July 18 to August 15. The observations of the second northern sector, Sector 15, began on 2019 August 15. The majority of Sectors 14 and 15 have been covered by ZTF, except for a portion of TESS Camera 4, due to the visibility limits. ZTF is also making additional nightly g- and r-band observations of denser stellar regions (e.g., near the Galactic Plane) to better facilitate variability studies of Galactic objects.