The survey is a collaboration between a Yale group, led by Prof. Charles Baltay, and Caltech group, led by Prof. S. George Djorgovski. We work in a close partnership with projects Grist and VOEventNet , both led by Dr. Roy Williams at Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research ( CACR ). The Caltech team also includes Drs. Ashish Mahabal, Matthew Graham, Ciro Donalek, Andrew Drake, and Eilat Glikman (now at Yale). The Yale team also includes Drs. David Rabinowitz, Richard Scalzo, Anne Bauer (now at MPIA), Nan Ellman, and Jonathan Jerke.
In addition, we have significant scientific collaborations with the groups at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne ( EPFL ) in Switzerland, led by Prof. G. Meylan, at the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica Optica y Electronica ( INAOE ) in Puebla, Mexico, led by Profs. O. Lopez-Cruz and L. Carrasco, and the LBNL Nearby Supernova Factory in Berkeley, Ca., led by Dr. Peter Nugent, as well as many other scientists at Yale, Caltech, Indiana Univ., and elsewhere.
This is probably the first major digital sky survey designed and implemented in the Virtual Observatory environment, and we work closely with the U.S. National Virtual Observatory (NVO).
This project uses almost 50% of the time at the P48 telescope, which is operated as a part of the Palomar-Quest Consortium, which includes Caltech, Yale, and JPL (the NEAT team).
The data are taken in the drift scan mode in strips of a constant Decination, 4.6 deg wide, and typically covering up to 500 deg2 per night. The Declination range is limited to be between +25 and -25 deg, and the total survey area is ~ 15,500 deg2. The sky is covered with multiple passes, with time baselines ranging from hours to years.
The camera generates typically ~ 70 GB of data per night. As of the late 2006, about 20 TB of raw data are in hand. The data are now transferred in the real time to Caltech, Yale, and Berkeley, and are processed using different pipelines optimized for various scientific projects. The intent is to make all of the data publicly available, in several installments.
The data are taken quasi-simultaneously (a few minutes drift scan delay) in up to 4 filters, either Johnson UBRI, or SDSS rizz, soon switching to a single SDSS griz filter set. Typical limiting magnitudes in a single pass are ~ 21 mag, and in ~ 6 - 8 coadded passes, the data reach the depth of SDSS in the redder bands.
The survey enables a wide variety of scientific projects.
A short paper describing the survey (Djorgovski et al. 2008, Astr. Nach. 329, in press): astro-ph/0801.3005 link * local pdf file (350 kb)
