Exploring the Optical Transient Sky with the Palomar Transient Factory

Creators: Rau, Arne; Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Law, Nicholas M.; Bloom, Joshua S.; Ciardi, David; Djorgovski, George S.; Fox, Derek B.; Gal-Yam, Avishay; Grillmair, Carl C.; Kasliwal, Mansi M.; Nugent, Peter E.; Ofek, Eran O.; Quimby, Robert M.; Reach, William T.; Shara, Michael; Bildsten, Lars; Cenko, S. Bradley; Drake, Andrew J.; Filippenko, Alexei V.; Helfand, David J.; Helou, George; Howell, D. Andrew; Poznanski, Dovi; Sullivan, Mark

Abstract

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a wide-field experiment designed to investigate the optical transient and variable sky on time scales from minutes to years. PTF uses the CFH12k mosaic camera, with a field of view of 7.9 deg^2 and a plate scale of 1″ pixel^(-1), mounted on the Palomar Observatory 48 inch Samuel Oschin Telescope. The PTF operation strategy is devised to probe the existing gaps in the transient phase space and to search for theoretically predicted, but not yet detected, phenomena, such as fallback supernovae, macronovae, .Ia supernovae, and the orphan afterglows of gamma-ray bursts. PTF will also discover many new members of known source classes, from cataclysmic variables in their various avatars to supernovae and active galactic nuclei, and will provide important insights into understanding galactic dynamics (through RR Lyrae stars) and the solar system (asteroids and near-Earth objects). The lessons that can be learned from PTF will be essential for the preparation of future large synoptic sky surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. In this article we present the scientific motivation for PTF and describe in detail the goals and expectations for this experiment.

Additional Information

© 2009 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Received 2008 November 28; accepted 2009 July 13; published 2009 October 5. This paper is based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope and the 60 inch telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Palomar Transient Factory project, a scientific collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Las Cumbres Observatory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. S. R. K. and his group were partially supported by NSF grant AST-0507734. J. S. B. and his group were partially supported by a Hellman Family Grant, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, NSF/DDDAS-TNRP grant CNS-0540352, and a continuing grant from DOE/SciDAC. TheWeizmann Institute PTF partnership is supported by an ISF equipment grant to A. G., whose activity is further supported by a Marie Curie IRG grant from the EU, and by the Minerva Foundation, the Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics, a research grant from Peter and Patricia Gruber Awards, and the William Z. and Eda Bess Novick New Scientists Fund at the Weizmann Institute. E. O. O. thanks NASA for partial support through grants HST-GO-11104.01-A, NNX08AM04G, 07-GLAST1-0023, and HST-AR-11766.01-A. A. V. F. and his group are grateful for funding from NSF grant AST-0607485, DOE/SciDAC grant DE-FC02-06ER41453, DOE grant DE-FG02-08ER41563, the TABASGO Foundation, Gary and Cynthia Bengier, the Sylvia and Jim Katzman Foundation, and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. S. G. D. and A. A. M. were supported in part by NSF grants AST-0407448 and CNS-0540369, and also by the Ajax Foundation. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, has provided resources for this project by supporting staff and providing computational resources and data storage. L. B.'s research is supported by the NSF via grants PHY 05-51164 and AST 07-07633. M. S. acknowledges support from the Royal Society and the University of Oxford Fell Fund.

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