Related papers: A Machine Learning empowered search for Sub-Minute…
The next generation of observatories will facilitate the discovery of new types of astrophysical transients. The detection of such phenomena, whose characteristics are presently poorly constrained, will hinge on the ability to perform blind…
With the advent of powerful telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, we are entering an era of multiwavelength transient astronomy that will lead to a dramatic increase in data volume. Machine…
Large sky surveys are increasingly relying on image subtraction pipelines for real-time (and archival) transient detection. In this process one has to contend with varying PSF, small brightness variations in many sources, as well as…
The rate of image acquisition in modern synoptic imaging surveys has already begun to outpace the feasibility of keeping astronomers in the real-time discovery and classification loop. Here we present the inner workings of a framework,…
An imaging technique with sensitivity to short duration optical transients is described. The technique is based on the use of wide-field cameras operating in a drift scanning mode, whereby persistent objects produce trails on the sensor and…
While optical surveys regularly discover slow transients like supernovae on their own, the most common way to discover extragalactic fast transients, fading away in a few nights, is via follow-up observations of gamma-ray burst and…
Microlensing has a unique advantage for detecting dark objects in the Milky Way, such as free-floating planets, neutron stars, and stellar-mass black holes. Most microlensing surveys focus on the Galactic bulge, where higher stellar density…
Searches for optical transients are usually performed with a cadence of days to weeks, optimised for supernova discovery. The optical fast transient sky is still largely unexplored, with only a few surveys to date having placed meaningful…
Transient, star-like point sources that appear and vanish over short timescales are described in astronomical images prior to launch of Sputnik. We have reported that transient numbers diminish significantly in Earth's shadow (shadow…
We present the first multi-wavelength follow-up observations of two candidate gravitational-wave (GW) transient events recorded by LIGO and Virgo in their 2009-2010 science run. The events were selected with low latency by the network of GW…
[abridged] In large-scale time-domain surveys, the processing of data, from procurement up to the detection of sources, is generally automated. One of the main challenges is contamination by artifacts, especially in regions of strong…
We present DeepStreaks, a convolutional-neural-network, deep-learning system designed to efficiently identify streaking fast-moving near-Earth objects that are detected in the data of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a wide-field,…
We report on the serendipitous observations of Solar System objects imaged during the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS) 2014 observation campaign. Data from this high cadence, wide field survey was originally analyzed for finding…
We present three new eclipsing white-dwarf / M-dwarf binary systems discovered during a search for transiting planets around M-dwarfs. Unlike most known eclipsing systems of this type, the optical and infrared emission is dominated by the…
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a new robotic time-domain survey currently in progress using the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt Telescope. ZTF uses a 47 square degree field with a 600 megapixel camera to scan the entire northern visible sky…
We present an automated search method for radio transients on the minute timescale focused on the emerging long period transients (LPTs) in image-plane radio data. The method is tuned for use with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and…
The primary challenge in the study of explosive astrophysical transients is their detection and characterisation using multiple messengers. For this purpose, we have developed a new data-driven discovery framework, based on deep learning.…
We present a new observational campaign, DWARF, aimed at detection of circumbinary extrasolar planets using the timing of the minima of low-mass eclipsing binaries. The observations will be performed within an extensive network of…
Astrophysical transients have been observed for millennia and have shaped our most basic assumptions about the Universe. In the last century, systematic searches have grown from detecting handfuls of transients per year to over 7000 in 2018…
When planning a survey for astronomical transients, many factors such as cadence, filter choice, sky coverage, and depth of observations need to be balanced in order to optimize the scientific gain of the survey. Here we present a software…