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-- ABOUT --

Compared with the optical, the exploration of the radio transient sky lags far behind. There is much opportunity for discovery. Hence we have planned a survey of the radio sky with the Jansky VLA, and to use PTF as a resource for a contemporaneous optical survey. We will be observing Stripe 82 with JVLA at four epochs separated by 1 week, 1 month and 1 year. The PTF + JVLA Key Project thus aims at filling the phase space of radio transients with timescales ranging from 1 week to several years.


-- SURVEY SPECIFICS --

The rectangular survey region is bounded by: blc = (329.127,-1.132), trc = (353.158,+1.167)
The total area of 50 sq. deg. is split equally among two nights in a given epoch. Each epoch has 14 hours worth of JVLA data and 970 pointings in all. The observations are done between LST 1930h and 0230h. PTF is observing the field at a 1-hour cadence. We are down to a record-breaking duration of about 6 hours for the data reduction and source-cataloging of JVLA data.
rms achieved:
  • E1,N1 (13-Jul-2012) = 155 uJy (median), 179 uJy (mean), 1179 sources
  • E1,N2 (14-Jul-2012) = 90 uJy (median), 116 uJy (mean), 2109 sources
  • E2,N2 (15-Aug-2012) = 77 uJy (median), 106 uJy (mean), 2410 sources
  • E2,N1 (18-Aug-2012) = 73 uJy (median), 94 uJy (mean), 2558 sources
  • E3,N2 (23-Aug-2012) = 93 uJy (median), 118 uJy (mean), 1885 sources
  • E3,N1 (24-Aug-2012) = 75 uJy (median), 97 uJy (mean), 2434 sources

-- ARCHIVAL DATA --



-- OTHER LINKS --

JVLA Observation Preparation Tool
SDSS DR9 CrossID
SDSS DR9 Navigator


logN-logS

Our Survey will have a six sigma rms of 0.3 mJy, which allows us to detect at least a few non-thermal TDEs, OGRBAs, type-II RSN, and possibly even NS mergers.


Multi-wavelength coverage of Stripe 82 (from Hodge et al. 2011)

Stripe 82 has plenty of multi-wavelength data which would be essential for the characterization of the progenitor of any transient which we might find in our survey ( figure from Hodge et al. 2011).


PTF fields in Stripe 82

Eran has defined new PTF fields in Stripe 82. Different fields are shown here as red and blue rectangles. The field ID is given at the center of each rectangle.


JVLA pointings in Stripe 82

The 50 sq. deg. region will be broken in two halves to be observed on two successive nights. This figure shows the JVLA poitnings generated via the makeschedule task in CASA for each of the two nights.


Location of phase calibrators near Stripe 82

Location of phase calibrators near Stripe 82. The green points show the calibrators marked as 'P' or 'S' on the VLA Calibrator Archive, and hence are the only suitable calibrators for the survey.

Tiles of Stripe 82 images with JVLA - Reference Epoch night 2

Steve has created images for both nights of the reference epoch. The median rms for night-1 is 155 uJy and that for night-2 is 90 uJy.