Astronomy Colloquium: CRTS: An Open Optical Transient Survey

CRTS: An Open Optical Transient Survey
Date: Wednesday October 6, 2010 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: Cahill Center, Hameetman Auditorium

Andrew Drake, computational scientist, Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research

The Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS) is a Caltech operated optical transient survey that covers most of the Northern and Southern sky in search of transient astrophysical phenomena occurring on timescales of minutes to years. The project uses data from the Catalina Sky Survey NEO search and began real-time discovery and publication of transient events in November 2007. CRTS has found thousands of sources ranging from UV Ceti and dwarf nova outbursts to supernovae and Blazars. I will discuss the survey, the discoveries made to date, and our efforts to provide immediate open access to CRTS discoveries and historical CSS data.

* For further information: contact Gina Armas gina@its.caltech.edu phone: 4671
For the full scoop, see event web page: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~gma/colloquia.html.
* Sponsored by: Physics, Math and Astronomy