Related papers: The unblinking eye on the sky
We present sensipy, an open-source Python toolkit for simulating observations of transient astrophysical sources, particularly in the high-energy (HE, keV-GeV) and very-high-energy (VHE, GeV-TeV) gamma-ray ranges. The most explosive events…
Discoveries in the last few years have revolutionized our knowledge of the universe and our ideas of its ultimate fate. Measurements of the expansion of the universe show that it is not slowing down under normal gravity but accelerating due…
The study of transient and variable low-frequency radio sources is a key goal for LOFAR, with an extremely broad science case ranging from relativistic jets sources to pulsars, exoplanets, radio bursts at cosmological distances, the…
The SKA's design is driven by the needs of cutting-edge radio astronomy for sensitivity and spacial resolution. However its design is also driven by the desire to explore the transient radio Universe. In addition to pulsars, the SKA will be…
The time domain of the sky has been only sparsely explored. Nevertheless, recent discoveries from limited surveys and serendipitous discoveries indicate that there is much to be found on timescales from nanoseconds to years and at…
The transient sky is composed of diverse phenomena that exhibits dramatic changes on short timescales. These events range from sub-second bursts to weeks and month timescale variability from compact systems. Several challenges need to be…
HEX-P will launch at a time when the sky is being routinely scanned for transient gravitational wave, electromagnetic and neutrino phenomena that will require the capabilities of a sensitive, broadband X-ray telescope for follow up studies.…
How often do bright optical transients occur on the sky but go unreported? To constrain the bright end of the astronomical transient function, a systematic search for transients that become bright enough to be noticed by the unaided eye was…
There has never been a more exciting time in the overlapping areas of nuclear physics, particle physics and relativistic astrophysics than today. Orbiting observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE),…
Thousands of active artificial objects are orbiting around Earth along with much more non-operational ones -- derelict satellites or rocket bodies, collision debris, or spacecraft payloads, significant part of them being uncatalogued. They…
The development of the latest generation of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) over recent decades has led to the discovery of new extreme astrophysical phenomena in the very-high-energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray regime.…
The Bright Transient Survey (BTS) aims to obtain a classification spectrum for all bright ($m_\mathrm{peak}\,\leq\,18.5\,$mag) extragalactic transients found in the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public survey. BTS critically relies on…
Astro-COLIBRI is an innovative tool designed for professional astronomers to facilitate the study of transient astronomical events. Transient events - such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and stellar mergers - are fleeting cataclysmic…
After exactly a century since the formulation of the general theory of relativity, the phenomenon of gravitational lensing is still an extremely powerful method for investigating in astrophysics and cosmology. Indeed, it is adopted to study…
We outline scientific objectives for monitoring X-ray sources and transients with wide-angle, coded mask cameras. It is now possible to instantaneously view half of the sky over long time intervals, gaining access to events of extraordinary…
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is performing a three-day cadence survey of the visible Northern sky (~3$\pi$). The transient candidates found in this survey are announced via public alerts. As a supplementary product ZTF is also…
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a synoptic sky survey in operation since 2009. PTF utilizes a 7.1 square degree camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope to survey the sky primarily at a single wavelength (R-band) at a rate of…
Gravitational Lensing is an efficient tool to probe: the mass distribution of collapsed systems: galaxies and clusters; high redshift objects thanks to the gravitational amplification; and the geometry of the Universe. I will review here…
Technology has advanced to the point that it is possible to image the entire sky every night and process the data in real time. The sky is hardly static: many interesting phenomena occur, including variable stationary objects such as stars…
Gravitational-wave detectors with sensitivities sufficient to measure the radiation from astrophysical sources are rapidly coming into existence. By the end of this decade, there will exist several ground-based instruments in North America,…