Telescopes and missions
Understanding the origin and nature of transients is among the key motivations for the deployment of present and future missions surveying the sky across the electromagnetic field from Earth and space. In recent years, major technical advances in instrumentation have provided unprecedentedly rich and diverse datasets and have led to the discovery of new types of transients.
The next five years will be transformative, with several game-changing instruments being deployed or planned for launch. Our group is involved in several of these cutting-edge missions:
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration, which has just commenced operation at the Kitt Peak Observatory (Arizona), will gather optical spectra for tens of millions of galaxies over the next five years and will provide the largest spectroscopic map of both entire galaxies and individual stars to date, which offers many discovery opportunities for the transient community. Check out our research page for projects using DESI data!
ULTRASAT
Scheduled for launch in 2024, the ULTRASAT mission is the first Israeli-led scientific satellite and will explore the sky in ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths. It is expected to revolutionize our understanding of the transient sky and to impact the field deeply, both in Israel and around the world. Check out our research page for projects related to ULTRASAT!
The La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4)
While in recent years, most transients surveys have been concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, the La Silla Schmidt Survey (LS4), scheduled to begin operation in January 2022 in La Silla (Chile), will explore the transient sky from the South with little competition. Using a unique instrument mounted upon a Chilean mountain, it will survey the sky over the course of a decade and is assured to discover a myriad of transients. Check out our research page for projects related to LS4!
