ASKAP Monitoring of the Rubin Deep Drilling Fields

Abstract

In the past decade, time domain astronomy surveys across the multi-messenger spectrum have developed "alert streams" which circulate observational information in real-time to the wider astronomical community. Despite this being standard practice for optical, gamma-ray and gravitational wave time domain astronomy for several years now, this kind of infrastructure has not yet been deployed at-scale for radio telescopes. We are conducting a long-term monitoring program that targets the Rubin Deep Drilling Fields using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). The primary goal of this program is to provide serendipitous radio observations of all objects of interest in these fields, and circulate that information in as close to real-time as possible. In this manuscript we outline the survey plans and status, the infrastructure we have developed to disseminate this information and an initial data release comprising 5 months of ASKAP observations of each field (although only 3 months overlaps with Rubin) conducted on an approximately 10 day cadence with a noise level of $\sim 60\,μ$Jy. As part of this data release, we present updated high-cadence radio light curves to the tidal disruption event AT2018hyz and the supernova SN2024abfo along with the discovery of two new radio variables, a possible tidal disruption event ASKAP J095711.5+051205 and an in-progress extreme scattering event ASKAP J005026.4-422958. The scientific results from this program along with the infrastructure developed to acquire them will lay the foundation for the integration of future radio imaging surveys into the broader multi-messenger alert stream, leading the way for major facilities such as the Schmidt Observatory System and the SKA.