• DOI:10.1086/648598
• Corpus ID: 62829270

The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance, and First Results

@article{Law2009ThePT,
  title={The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance, and First Results},
  author={Nicholas M. Law and Shrinivas R. Kulkarni and Richard Dekany and Eran. O. Ofek and Robert M. Quimby and Peter E. Nugent and Jason A. Surace and Carl C. Grillmair and Joshua S. Bloom and Mansi M. Kasliwal and Lars Bildsten and Tim Brown and S. Bradley Cenko and David R. Ciardi and Ernest E. Croner and S. George Djorgovski and Julian C. van Eyken and Alexei V. Filippenko and Derek B. Fox and Avishay Gal-yam and David D. S. Hale and Nouhad Hamam and George Helou and John R. Henning and D. Andrew Howell and Janet S. Jacobsen and Russ R. Laher and Sean E. K. Mattingly and D. L. Mckenna and Andrew J. Pickles and Dovi Poznanski and Gustavo Rahmer and Arne Rau and Wayne E. Rosing and Michael M. Shara and Roger M. Smith and Daniel A. Starr and Mark Sullivan and Viswa Velur and R. Walters and Jeffry Zolkower},
  journal={Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific},
  year={2009},
  volume={121},
  pages={1395 - 1408}
}

• N. Law, S. Kulkarni, +38 authors J. Zolkower
• Published 30 June 2009
• Physics
• Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

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 80% of the 1.2 m and 50% of the 1.5 m telescope time. With an exposure of 60 s the survey reaches a depth of mg′ ≈ 21.3 and mR ≈ 20.6 (5σ, 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 s and 1 day; (3) a search for eclipsing binaries and transiting planets in Orion; and (4) a 3π sr deep H-alpha survey. PTF provides automatic, real-time 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.