Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS)
Real-time transient astronomy
Event based astronomy is assuming an increasingly important role in astronomy as large
time-domain surveys such as CRTS, Pan-STARRs,
SkyMapper and LSST come online. Surveys
such as CRTS are already discovering
thousands of transient astronomical sources ranging from Near Earth Asteroids
to distant Supernovae.
Although the primary survey instruments and pipelines for some of these surveys are in place,
in order to fully characterize the nature of rapid transient events, automated alerting and
follow-up and characterization is a necessity. Such real-time astronomy can now be carried
out via tools such as VOEventNet, SkyAlert, and time-domain astronomy archives and classifiaction
tools.
Time-domain astronomy
The Universe is an ever change place. Time-domain astronomy involves understanding and
characterizing the past, current, and future of astronomical sources through synoptic
astronomical surveys.
White Dwarf Exoplanets
Over the last 10 years the search for planets like our own has grown to become
a major research area in astronomy. However, ground-based surveys remain limited
in their senstivity to Earth-size planets. One prospect is the search for such
planets around evolved white dwarf stars, where a planet the size of Earth
could becoming detectable by creating total eclipses of its companion star.
