Life Beyond PTF

Abstract

In March 2017, the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) ceased operations. I take this occasion to review the scientific returns from iPTF and its predecessor survey, the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), and to summarize the lessons learned. Succeeding iPTF on the Palomar Observatory 48-inch Schmidt telescope is the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a new survey with an order of magnitude faster survey speed that is now being commissioned. I describe the design and scientific rationale for ZTF. ZTF is prototyping new alert stream technologies being explored by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to distribute millions of transient alerts per night to downstream science users. I describe the design of the alert system and discuss it in the context of the wider LSST and community broker ecosystem.

6 pages, 1 figure; Invited review to appear in Proceedings of IAU Symposium 339, "Southern Horizons in Time Domain Astronomy"

References in corpus (13)

• A Wolf-Rayet-like progenitor of supernova SN 2013cu from spectral observations of a wind
• Proper image subtraction - optimal transient detection, photometry and hypothesis testing
• iPTF16geu: A multiply imaged, gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova
• Strong Ultraviolet Pulse From a Newborn Type Ia Supernova
• The IPAC Image Subtraction and Discovery Pipeline for the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory
• iPTF14yb: The First Discovery of a GRB Afterglow Independent of a High-Energy Trigger
• The unblinking eye on the sky
• Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory: Realtime Image Subtraction Pipeline
• PTF1 J082340.04+081936.5: A hot subdwarf B star with a low mass white dwarf companion in an 87 minute orbit
• Small near-Earth asteroids in the Palomar Transient Factory survey: A real-time streak-detection system
• Volumetric Survey Speed: A Figure of Merit for Transient Surveys
• Confirmation of Large Super-Fast Rotator (144977) 2005 EC127
• Processing Images from the Zwicky Transient Facility

Cited by in corpus (4)

• SuperNNova: an open-source framework for Bayesian, Neural Network based supernova classification
• The volumetric rate of normal type Ia supernovae in the local universe discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory
• Son of X--Shooter: a multi--band instrument for a multi--band universe
• Real-Time Detection and Classification of Astronomical Transient Events: The State-of-the-Art