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arXiv · 1904.06160

Opportunities in Time-Domain Extragalactic Astrophysics with the NASA Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam)

Nicholas P. Ross·Roberto J. Assef·Matthew J. Graham·J. Davy Kirkpatrick
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Abstract

This White Pape motivates the time domain extragalactic science case for the NASA Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam). NEOCam is a NASA Planetary mission whose goal is to discover and characterize asteroids and comets, to assess the hazard to Earth from near-Earth objects, and to study the origin, evolution, and fate of asteroids and comets. NEOCam will, however, cover 68% of the extragalactic sky and as the NEOWISE-R mission has recently proved, infrared information is now vital for identifying and characterizing the $\gtrsim$10 million IR bright Active Galactic Nuclei, as well as using the IR light curve to provide deep insights into accretion disk astrophysics. NEOWISE-R data has also been used to discover Super-luminous Supernovae, dust echos in Tidal Disruption Events and detects all of the known $z\geq7$ quasars (and over 80% of the known $z\geq6.70$ quasars). As such, for relatively little additional cost, adding the capacity for additional NEOCam data processing (and/or alerting) would have a massive scientific and legacy impact on extragalactic time domain science.

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Nicholas P. Ross, Roberto J. Assef, Matthew J. Graham, J. Davy Kirkpatrick. 2019-04-12. Opportunities in Time-Domain Extragalactic Astrophysics with the NASA Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam). https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.06160

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