The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance and First Results
Abstract
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a fully-automated, wide-field survey aimed at a systematic exploration of the optical transient sky. The transient survey is performed using a new 8.1 square degree camera installed on the 48-inch Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Observatory; colors and light curves for detected transients are obtained with the automated Palomar 60-inch telescope. PTF uses eighty percent of the 1.2-m and fifty percent of the 1.5-m telescope time. With an exposure of 60-s the survey reaches a depth of approximately 21.3 in g' and 20.6 in R (5 sigma, median seeing). Four major experiments are planned for the five-year project: 1) a 5-day cadence supernova search; 2) a rapid transient search with cadences between 90 seconds and 1 day; 3) a search for eclipsing binaries and transiting planets in Orion; and 4) a 3-pi sr deep H-alpha survey. PTF provides automatic, realtime transient classification and follow up, as well as a database including every source detected in each frame. This paper summarizes the PTF project, including several months of on-sky performance tests of the new survey camera, the observing plans and the data reduction strategy. We conclude by detailing the first 51 PTF optical transient detections, found in commissioning data.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0906.5350,
title = {The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance and First Results},
author = {N. M. Law and S. R. Kulkarni and R. G. Dekany and E. O. Ofek and R. M. Quimby and P. E. Nugent and J. Surace and C. C. Grillmair and J. S. Bloom and M. M. Kasliwal and L. Bildsten and T. Brown and S. B. Cenko and D. Ciardi and E. Croner and S. G. Djorgovski and J. C. van Eyken and A. V. Filippenko and D. B. Fox and A. Gal-Yam and D. Hale and N. Hamam and G. Helou and J. R. Henning and D. A. Howell and J. Jacobsen and R. Laher and S. Mattingly and D. McKenna and A. Pickles and D. Poznanski and G. Rahmer and A. Rau and W. Rosing and M. Shara and R. Smith and D. Starr and M. Sullivan and V. Velur and R. S. Walters and J. Zolkower},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.5350},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
12 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, submitted to PASP