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Universe Today
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Image Credit: Universe Today
Zwicky Classifies More Than 10,000 Exploding Stars
- The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) has detected 100,000 supernovae and classified 10,000 of them.
- The ZTF observes in both optical and infrared and was built to detect transients with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory.
- In 2017, the ZTF began its Bright Transient Survey (BTS), an effort dedicated to the search for supernovae (SNe).
- The effort to catalogue supernovae dates back to 2012 when astronomical databases began officially tracking them.
- Each night, the ZTF detects hundreds of thousands of events ranging from small, simple asteroids in our inner Solar System to powerful gamma-ray bursts in the distant Universe.
- The ZTF uses a pair of telescopes that act as a kind of ‘triage’ facility for supernovae and transients.
- ZTF Detections are also sent to other observatories around the world who can examine transients with other spectroscopic facilities.
- Soon, the ZTF will have a powerful partner in time-domain astronomy. The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) should see its first light in the next few months and then begin its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
- According to Caltech astronomy professor Mansi Kasliwal, who will lead ZTF in the coming two years, this will be a very important and exciting time in time-domain astronomy.
- Astronomical surveys like the ones performed by ZTF and the VRO provide foundational data that researchers will use for years.
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