High cadence optical transient searches using drift scan imaging II: Event rate upper limits on optical transients of duration &lt;21 ms and magnitude &lt;6.6

Tingay, S. J.; Joubert, Wynand

doi:10.1017/pasa.2020.53

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Unfortunately, most of the observational campaigns designed to search for FRB counterparts has returned null results, however, some upper-limits can be given [70]. The other reason for nondetection may be that the optical counterparts can be as short as FRBs [180], therefore high-cadence observation is needed for future searches [153].…”

Section: Frb Counterpartmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast Radio Bursts

Xiao¹,

Wang²,

Dai³

2022

Preprint

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The era of fast radio bursts (FRBs) was open in 2007, when a very bright radio pulse of unknown origin was discovered occasionally in the archival data of Parkes Telescope. Over the past fifteen years, this mysterious phenomenon have caught substantial attention among the scientific community and become one of the hottest topic in high-energy astrophysics. The total number of events has a dramatic increase to a few hundred recently, benefiting from new dedicated surveys and improved observational techniques. Our understanding of these bursts has been undergoing a revolutionary growth with observational breakthroughs announced consistently. In this chapter, we will give a comprehensive introduction of FRBs, including the latest progress. Starting from the basics, we will go through population study, inherent physical mechanism, and all the way to the application in cosmology. Plenty of open questions exist right now and there is more surprise to come in this active young field.

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Section: Frb Counterpartmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast Radio Bursts

Xiao¹,

Wang²,

Dai³

2022

Preprint

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“…Modern large-scale time-domain sky surveys, like upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (Ivezić et al 2019) and ongoing Zwicky Transient Facility (Bellm et al 2018) offer an unprecedented possibility of not only detailed study of already known classes of transient objects, like variable stars, novae, supernovae, tidal disruption and microlensing events, AGNs and distant Solar System objects, but also of discovery of potentially new and exciting classes of astrophysical transients, especially in the still poorly studied region of shortest time scales. Indeed, despite long history of various experiments aimed towards investigations of transients on time scale of fractions of seconds to a few seconds (Schaefer 1987;Kehoe et al 2002;Karpov et al 2010Karpov et al , 2019Richmond et al 2020;Tingay & Joubert 2021;Arimatsu et al 2021), ★ E-mail:karpov@fzu.cz † E-mail:julien.peloton@ĳclab.in2p3.fr they had only a limited success in detecting initial phases of gammaray bursts (Racusin et al 2008;Karpov et al 2017b;Zhang et al 2018), in part due to quite limited depth of these surveys.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of satellite glints on the transient science on ZTF scale

Karpov¹,

Peloton²

2022

Preprint

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Thousands of active artificial objects are orbiting around Earth along with much more nonoperational ones resulted from human activity -derelict satellites or rocket bodies, collision debris, or spacecraft payloads. Significant part of them are uncatalogued, and they represent potential dangers for space instruments and missions. They also impact observations of the sky by ground-based telescopes by producing a large number of streaks polluting the images, as well as generating false alerts hindering the search for new astrophysical transients. While the former threat for astronomy is widely discussed nowadays in regard of rapidly growing satellite mega-constellations, the latter one -false transients -still lacks attention on the similar level.In this work we assess the impact of satellite glints -rapid flashes produced by reflections of a sunlight from flat surfaces of rotating satellites -on current and future deep sky surveys such as the ones conducted by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and the Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). For that, we propose a simple routine that detects, in a single exposure, a series of repeated flashes along the trajectories of otherwise invisible satellites, and describe its implementation in F alert broker. Application of the routine to ZTF alert stream revealed about 73,000 individual events polluting 3.6% of all ZTF science images between November 2019 and December 2021 and linked to more than 300 different glinting satellites on all kinds of orbits, from low-Earth up to geostationary ones. The timescales of individual flashes are as short as 0.1-10 −3 seconds, with instant brightness of 4-14 magnitudes, peak amplitudes of at least 2-4 magnitudes, and generally complex temporal patterns of flashing activity. We expect LSST to see much more such satellite glints of even larger amplitudes due to its better sensitivity.

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“…Previously, Tingay (2020) and Tingay & Joubert (2021) (hereafter Papers I and II, respectively) developed a new technique for high-cadence optical imaging aimed at the detection of short timescale transients in wide-field surveys. The technique utilises the motion of the sky across a sensor attached to a wide-field optical system to achieve high time resolution (21 ms in Papers I and II), with the optical system actively driven in an east-west direction at a higher than sidereal rate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-cadence optical transient searches using drift scan imaging III: Development of an inexpensive drive control system and characterisation and correction of drive system periodic errors

Tingay

2021

Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust.

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In order to further develop and implement novel drift scan imaging experiments to undertake wide-field, high time resolution surveys for millisecond optical transients, an appropriate telescope drive system is required. This paper describes the development of a simple and inexpensive hardware and software system to monitor, characterise, and correct the primary category of telescope drive errors and periodic errors due to imperfections in the drive and gear chain. A model for the periodic errors is generated from direct measurements of the telescope drive shaft rotation, verified by comparison to astronomical measurements of the periodic errors. The predictive model is generated and applied in real time in the form of corrections to the drive rate. A demonstration of the system shows that inherent periodic errors of peak-to-peak amplitude ${\sim}{100}''$ are reduced to below the seeing limit of ${\sim}3''$ . This demonstration allowed an estimate of the uncertainties on the transient sensitivity timescales of the prototype survey of Tingay $\&$ Joubert (2021), with the nominal timescale sensitivity of 21 ms revised to be in the range of $20\!-\!22$ ms, which does not significantly affect the results of the experiment. The correction system will be adopted into the final version of high-cadence imaging experiment, which is currently under construction. The correction system is inexpensive ( $<\!{\$}$ A100) and composed of readily available hardware and is readily adaptable to other applications. Design details and codes are therefore made publicly available.

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High cadence optical transient searches using drift scan imaging II: Event rate upper limits on optical transients of duration <21 ms and magnitude <6.6

Cited by 10 publications

References 11 publications

Fast Radio Bursts

Fast Radio Bursts

Impact of satellite glints on the transient science on ZTF scale

High-cadence optical transient searches using drift scan imaging III: Development of an inexpensive drive control system and characterisation and correction of drive system periodic errors

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