The ASAS-SN (All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae) project

by Dr Ben Shappee (University of Hawaii (IFA))

Thursday Oct 4, 2018, 3:30 PM → 4:30 PM Pacific/Honolulu

WAT112

For the first time, the entire visible sky is being surveyed for the violent, variable, and transient events that shape our universe. To accomplish this, my collaborators and I built the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), which is a long-term project to monitor the whole sky as fast as feasible using a global network of robotic telescopes.

The primary goal of ASAS-SN is to find the closest and brightest supernovae (SNe) with an unbiased search: ASAS-SN now discovers more than half of all bright (V<17 mag) supernovae. These nearby supernovae are critical in studying the physical nature of their progenitor systems because we can study them in unprecedented detail across the electromagnetic spectrum, which cannot be done for their more distant counterparts. However, this systematic all-sky technique also allows ASAS-SN to discover many other interesting galactic and extragalactic transients.  During this talk, I will give an overview of the ASAS-SN survey and highlight some of our more interesting discoveries. Finally, I will put ASAS-SN into context with other transient surveys such as ATLAS, PanSTARRS, and the future LSST, laying out the bright future of transient astronomy.

 

Shappee_part1.pdf

Shappee_part2.pdf