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arXiv · 1702.05585

The SkyMapper Transient Survey

Richard Scalzo·Fang Yuan·Michael J. Childress·Anais Moller·Brian Schmidt·Brad E. Tucker·Bonnie Zhang·Pierre Astier·Marc Betoule·Nicolas Regnault
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Abstract

The SkyMapper 1.3 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory has now begun regular operations. Alongside the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky, SkyMapper will carry out a search for supernovae and other transients. The search strategy, covering a total footprint area of ~2000 deg2 with a cadence of $\leq 5$ days, is optimised for discovery and follow-up of low-redshift type Ia supernovae to constrain cosmic expansion and peculiar velocities. We describe the search operations and infrastructure, including a parallelised software pipeline to discover variable objects in difference imaging; simulations of the performance of the survey over its lifetime; public access to discovered transients; and some first results from the Science Verification data.

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Richard Scalzo, Fang Yuan, Michael J. Childress, Anais Moller, Brian Schmidt, Brad E. Tucker, Bonnie Zhang, Pierre Astier, Marc Betoule, Nicolas Regnault. 2017-02-18. The SkyMapper Transient Survey. https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2017.24

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