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Rubin Observatory LSST Transients and Variable Stars Roadmap
Hartigan, Patrick; Buckley, David; Davenport, James R. A. +79 more
The Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) holds the potential to revolutionize time domain astrophysics, reaching completely unexplored areas of the Universe and mapping variability time scales from minutes to a decade. To prepare to maximize the potential of the Rubin LSST data for the exploration of the transient and variable Univ…
Spectroscopic Time Series Performance of the Mid-infrared Instrument on the JWST
Espinoza, Néstor; Bell, Taylor J.; Bouwman, Jeroen +21 more
We present here the first ever mid-infrared spectroscopic time series observation of the transiting exoplanet L 168-9 b with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained as part of the MIRI commissioning activities, to characterize the performance of the Low Resolution Spectroscopy (LRS) mode for the…
Spectroscopic Time-series Performance of JWST/NIRSpec from Commissioning Observations
Nikolov, Nikolay; Sing, David K.; Böker, Torsten +22 more
We report on James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) commissioning observations of the transiting exoplanet HAT-P-14 b, obtained using the Bright Object Time Series (BOTS) mode of the NIRSpec instrument with the G395H/F290LP grating/filter combination (3-5 µm). While the data were used primarily to verify that the NIRSpec BOTS mode is working as e…
The Large Array Survey Telescope-System Overview and Performances
Gal-Yam, A.; Kowalski, M.; Sadeh, I. +38 more
The Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST) is a wide-field visible-light telescope array designed to explore the variable and transient sky with a high cadence. LAST will be composed of 48, 28 cm f/2.2 telescopes (32 already installed) equipped with full-frame backside-illuminated cooled CMOS detectors. Each telescope provides a field of view (FoV) o…
The SNAD Viewer: Everything You Want to Know about Your Favorite ZTF Object
Ishida, Emille E. O.; Krone-Martins, Alberto; Volnova, Alina A. +9 more
We describe the SNAD Viewer, a web portal for astronomers which presents a centralized view of individual objects from the Zwicky Transient Facility's (ZTF) data releases, including data gathered from multiple publicly available astronomical archives and data sources. Initially built to enable efficient expert feedback in the context of adaptive m…
JWST NIRCam Defocused Imaging: Photometric Stability Performance and How It Can Sense Mirror Tilts
Gennaro, Mario; Espinoza, Néstor; Perrin, Marshall D. +25 more
We use JWST NIRCam short-wavelength photometry to capture a transit lightcurve of the exoplanet HAT-P-14 b to assess performance as part of instrument commissioning. The short-wavelength precision is 152 ppm per 27 s integration as measured over the full time series compared to a theoretical limit of 107 ppm, after corrections to spatially correla…
The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph for JWST. V. Kernel Phase Imaging and Data Analysis
Willott, Chris J.; Noirot, Gaël; Mérand, Antoine +26 more
Kernel phase imaging (KPI) enables the direct detection of substellar companions and circumstellar dust close to and below the classical (Rayleigh) diffraction limit. The high-Strehl full pupil images provided by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are ideal for application of the KPI technique. We present a kernel phase analysis of JWST NIRISS …
The Large Array Survey Telescope-Science Goals
Gal-Yam, A.; Rybicki, K.; Sadeh, I. +21 more
The Large Array Survey Telescope (LAST) is designed to survey the variable and transient sky at high temporal cadence. The array is comprised of 48 F/2.2 telescopes of 27.9 cm aperture, coupled to full-frame backside-illuminated cooled CMOS detectors with 3.76 µm pixels, resulting in a pixel scale of 1.″25. A single telescope with a field of…
Introducing the Condor Array Telescope. I. Motivation, Configuration, and Performance
Walter, Frederick M.; Shara, Michael M.; Lanzetta, Kenneth M. +4 more
The "Condor Array Telescope" or "Condor" is a high-performance "array telescope" comprised of six apochromatic refracting telescopes of objective diameter 180 mm, each equipped with a large-format, very low-read-noise (≈1.2 e-), very rapid-read-time (<1 s) CMOS camera. Condor is located at a very dark astronomical site in the southwe…
A Study of Twelve Potential Merger Candidate Contact Binary Systems
Filipović, Miroslav D.; Wadhwa, Surjit S.; Tothill, Nick F. H. +4 more
Photometric observations and analysis of twelve previously poorly studied contact binary systems is presented. All show total eclipses and have extremely low mass ratios ranging from 0.072 to 0.15. Also, all show characteristics of orbital instability with mass ratios within the theoretical orbital instability range. Although none demonstrate a si…