The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a fully-automated, wide-field survey aimed at a systematic exploration of the optical transient sky.
News
October 2009: Mysterious transients unmasked as the bright blue death throes of massive stars submitted to Nature (embargoed for discussion in the press).
August 2009: PTF in the news:
1,2,3,4
29 June 2009: Two new papers: a detailed description of the PTF project and the commissioning results (astro-ph/0906.5350) and a study of the science planned for PTF (astro-ph/0906.5355).
23 May 2009: Discovery, Photometric and Spectroscopic Follow Up Of Another Fifteen Optical Transients (ATel #2055)
29 June 2009: Two new papers: a detailed description of the PTF project and the commissioning results (astro-ph/0906.5350) and a study of the science planned for PTF (astro-ph/0906.5355).
23 May 2009: Discovery, Photometric and Spectroscopic Follow Up Of Another Fifteen Optical Transients (ATel #2055)
28 Apr 2009: The Palomar Transient Factory Discovers a Possible super-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernova (ATel #2037)
2 Apr 2009: Another 25 transient detections and followups from PTF (ATel #2005)
22 March 2009: Eleven more transient detections from PTF (ATel #1983)
11 March 2009: The first PTF transient detections! (ATel #1964)
The PTF Project
The program is centered on a 12Kx8K, 7.8 square degree CCD array (CFH12K) re-engineered for the
1.2-m Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory by COO (Rahmer et al. 2008). Photometric
followup is undertaken by the automated Palomar 1.5-m telescope (Cenko et al. 2006) and other
facilities provided by consortium members.
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 an approximate depth of m_R=20.5 and m_g'=21.
Two major transient detection experiments are planned for the five-year project:
1) a 5-day cadence supernova search
2) an exotic transient search with cadences between 90 seconds and 1 day.
PTF provides automatic, realtime transient classification and followup, as well as a database including every source detected in each frame.
PTF is a collaboration of Caltech, LBNL, IPAC, Berkeley, LCOGT, Oxford, Columbia and the Weizmann Institute.