The Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) hard X-ray transient monitor provides near real-time coverage of the X-ray sky in the energy range 15-50 keV. The BAT observes 88% of the sky each day with a detection sensitivity of 5.3 mCrab for a full-day …
Modern time-domain surveys continuously monitor large swaths of the sky to look for astronomical variability. Astrophysical discovery in such data sets is complicated by the fact that detections of real transient and variable sources are highly …
The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory reports our discovery of a young supernova, iPTF13bvn, in the nearby galaxy, NGC 5806 (22.5 Mpc). Our spectral sequence in the optical and infrared suggests a Type Ib classification. We identify a blue …
The direct detection of binary systems in wide-field surveys is limited by the size of the stars' point-spread functions (PSFs). A search for elongated objects can find closer companions, but is limited by the precision to which the PSF shape can be …
In this first paper in a series, we present 1298 low-redshift (z łesssim 0.2) optical spectra of 582 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) observed from 1989 to 2008 as part of the Berkeley Supernova Ia Program (BSNIP). 584 spectra of 199 SNe Ia have …
From the first two seasons of the Palomar Transient Factory, we identify three peculiar transients (PTF 09dav, PTF 10iuv, and PTF 11bij) with five distinguishing characteristics: peak luminosity in the gap between novae and supernovae (M$_R$ ≈ -15.5 …
We present optical light curves of 29 novae in M31 during the 2009 and 2010 observing seasons of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). The dynamic and rapid cadences in PTF monitoring of M31, from one day to ten minutes, provide excellent temporal …
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a synoptic survey designed to explore the transient and variable sky in a wide variety of cadences. We use PTF observations of fields that were observed multiple times (gtrsim10) per night, for several nights, …
Stellar rotation periods measured from single-age populations are critical for investigating how stellar angular momentum content evolves over time, how that evolution depends on mass, and how rotation influences the stellar dynamo and the …
This paper presents the first results from a new citizen science project: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae. This proof-of-concept project uses members of the public to identify supernova candidates from the latest generation of wide-field imaging transient …