Monitoring Alert Streams

Groups using event brokers and monitoring alert streams to identify lensed transient candidates from other surveys (mostly ZTF, but potentially also PS1, eventually LSST, etc.)

• IAC group (Ismael, Camilo, Rui) and RIT group (Sukanya, Ben) are using mars.lco.global, lasair.roe.ac.uk

• NOAO group (Monika, Chien-Hsiu) are using antares.noao.edu

• MPA group (Sherry et al) are using the Ampel broker

Contacts:

• Ismael Perez Fournon <ipf@iac.es>

• Camilo Jiménez <camilo.jimenez@iac.es>

• Rui Marques-Chaves <rmarques@iac.es>

• Sukanya Chakrabarti <chakrabarti@astro.rit.edu>

• Benjamin Lewis <ben.lewis@benl.co.uk>

• Monika Soraisam <soraisam@noao.edu>

• Chien-Hsiu Lee <clee@email.noao.edu>

• Sherry Suyu <suyu@mpa-garching.mpg.de>

2019 Dec 11: Note on new ZTF Operations mode

The Zwicky Transient Facility has two categories of observations: a public survey (all alerts immediately released), and a set of "partner time" programs (detections are not necessarily released).

In the past ZTF partnership time has been used for higher cadence (than the public survey) and to look for transients as early possible. Then the ZTF partners realized that they could stack those high cadence observations into deeper ones to detect fainter transients, or detect the on-set of supernova explosions that a single ZTF exposure cannot reach. The ZTF team members leading this effort (i.e. developing and deploying the tools for image stacking and difference image analysis) are also very interested in finding strongly lensed SNe. They have now developed a new observing strategy that is under way now, using partner time (private data) for longer exposures on a longer cadence, specifically optimized for strongly lensed SN detections.

It is not clear if ZTF partners will share the discovery of new lensed SNe in real time (or at least report to ATel/TNS).