ZTF granted more funding to work in tandem with the Vera Rubin Observatory
The 1.6 million USD support from the National Science Foundation will support continued operations of ZTF through the end of 2026 enabling joined observations with the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory.
The National Science Foundation has granted an additional USD 1.6 million to the Zwicky Transient Facility partnership to continue scientific operations in 2025 and 2026. This extension will ensure that both ZTF and the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory can observe the dynamic sky simultaneously, enabling astronomers to address many novel and long-standing scientific questions. “This is fantastic news for the global time-domain astronomy community,” says Mansi Kasliwal, an astronomy professor at Caltech and the principal investigator of the successful NSF proposal.
ZTF Public Data Release 22
There are changes to the public data release schedule in ZTF-O4. Please, read the information on our website.
This release adds 4 months of observations to the twenty-first data release, up to 30 June 2024 for the public portion of the survey, and private survey time prior to 28 February 2023. The products include 58.5 million single-exposure images, 177 thousand co-added images, accompanying source catalog files containing 888 billion source detections extracted from those images, and 4.92 billion light curves constructed from the single-exposure extractions.
Science Highlights
Exploring the largest sample of superluminous supernovae
The ZTF partners at the University of Stockholm conducted a comprehensive analysis of the largest sample of superluminous supernova compiled from ZTF data. SLSN are very heterogeneous and their explosion mechanism remain unclear. Studies like this can aid theoretical modeling of the mechanisms of these powerful explosions.
Optical and radio properties of broad-lines Ic supernovae
Srinivasaragavan, Gokul P. et al.,
The authors study a sample of 36 Broad-lined Type Ic Supernovae (SNe Ic-BL) from the ZTF Bright Transient Survey, detected between March 2018 and August 2021.We find that the populations that have radio detections and radio non-detections are indistinct from one another with respect to their optically-inferred explosion properties, and there are no statistically significant correlations present between the events’ radio luminosities and optically-inferred explosion properties.
The spectral diversity of Type Ia supernovae in a ZTF DR2 sample
More than 3000 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are presented in the Zwicky Transient Facility SN Ia Data Release 2 (ZTF DR2). In this paper, the authors explore the spectral properties of 482 SNe Ia near maximum light (a subset of the 3000 SN Ia in DR2), up to a redshift limit of z ≤ 0.06. They also investigate the relation between the properties of the spectral features and the photometric properties from the SALT2 light-curve parameters as a function of spectroscopic sub-class. The paper also includes a discussion on the non-negligible impact of host galaxy contamination on SN Ia spectral classifications, as well as investigate the accuracy of spectral template matching of the ZTF DR2 sample.
Strongly-lensed supernova lightcurves in ZTF
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) was expected to detect more than one strong gravitationally-lensed supernova (glSN) per year, but only one event was identified in the first four years of the survey. This work investigates selection biases in the search strategy that could explain the discrepancy and revise discovery predictions.
LIGO O4a: Searching for GW optical counterparts with ZTF
During the first half of the fourth observing run (O4a) of the International Gravitational Wave Network (IGWN), the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) conducted a systematic search for kilonova (KN) counterparts to binary neutron star (BNS) and neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger candidates. In this paper, the authors present a comprehensive study of the five high-significance (FAR less than 1 per year) BNS and NSBH candidates in O4a. We circulated 15 candidates, but found no viable KN counterpart to any of the GW events.
The Early UV curves of Type II supernovae
In this study, the authors present a sample of 34 normal Type II supernovae (SNe II) detected with the Zwicky Transient Facility, with multiband UV light curves starting less than 4 days after explosion, and X-ray observations. They characterize the early UV-optical color, provide empirical host-extinction corrections, and show that the t > 2 day UV-optical colors and the blackbody evolution of the sample are consistent with shock cooling (SC) regardless of the presence of "flash ionization" features.
ZTF Science Vlog
The ZTF vlog brings you the latest ZTF results presented by the authors themselves.
Deciphering the origin story of a faint and fast evolving supernova SN 2023zaw
In this science vlog, PhD student Kaustav Das from Caltech presents a meticulous study of a very exciting supernova discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility. Being one of the rare objects in the sky, it provides important clues about the multitude of evolutions of supernovae.
Community science with ZTF
We highlight scientific publications from individuals and groups outside of the ZTF partnership that use ZTF public data
Asteroid Population Outlier Detection
Gowanlock, Michael; Trilling, David E. et al
[Abstract] The Solar system Notification Alert Processing System (SNAPS) is a Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and Rubin Observatory alert broker that will send alerts to the community regarding interesting events in the solar system. SNAPS is actively monitoring solar system objects and one of its functions is to compare objects (primarily main belt asteroids) to one another to find those that are outliers relative to the population. In this paper, we use the SNAPShot1 data set, which contains 31,693 objects from ZTF, and derive outlier scores for each of these objects.
|ZTF Summer Students
In this section, we highlight the students who carried out summer research projects under the mentorship of ZTF researchers.
Creating the largest catalog of supernovae
My name is Harlan Phillips, I began studying at Bakersfield College, majoring in Computer Science. I had the incredible opportunity to intern at NASA Ames Research Center, which fueled my passion for space exploration. Now, as an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major at UC Berkeley, my fascination with space continues to grow. A pivotal moment for me was attending a conference where I heard an astronaut speak about the 'Overview Effect'— a profound psychological shift astronauts experience in space.
Harlan Phillips
University of California, Berkeley
Anna Ho
Cornell University
I am an assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell, studying cosmic explosions such as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae. Outside research, I sing in a local community choir and volunteer at the Lab of Ornithology.
Detection of the desintegrated long-period comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)
My name is Salvatore Cordova and I am currently a senior majoring in Physics and Philosophy at Boston University. I was born in Chile, but lived most of my life in Peru. I've always been deeply curious about how the world works; a passion that has manifested itself in my pursuit of astronomy, condensed matter physics, teaching, and ethics. When I’m not talking about physics or philosophy, I can usually be found playing Chess or petting the nearest dog!
Salvatore Cordova
Boston University
Quanzhi Ye
University of Maryland, College Park
I am an astronomer at the University of Maryland and a long-term visitor at Boston University.
I am primarily interested in the small bodies of the Solar System – asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
These objects are pristine remnants from the early times of Solar System and can help us understand
planetary formation, migration, and evolution.
I was captivated by the stars when I was a child. I still enjoy going out for (non-work-related)
stargazing every once in a while. Besides stars, I also have a passion for music. I have played
violin, viola and cello in various orchestras and string ensembles as I move from China to Canada
and then the US. Most recently, I played viola and cello in Caltech’s wonderful Chamber Music program.
In Search of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids in the Taurid Resonant Swarm
My name is Jasmine Li and and I'm a freshman at Carnegie Mellon University, where I study at the College of Engineering. I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland as an avid reader, and was fascinated by the many astronomy books I came across. I began studying astronomy in earnest after competing in a Science Olympiad astronomy event and I'm really glad for the opportunity to do research under Dr. Quanzhi Ye, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park this summer. Outside of work, I likes to crochet, run, and draw.
Jasmine Li
Carnegie Mellon University
Quanzhi Ye
University of Maryland, College Park
I am an astronomer at the University of Maryland and a long-term visitor at Boston University.
I am primarily interested in the small bodies of the Solar System – asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
These objects are pristine remnants from the early times of Solar System and can help us understand
planetary formation, migration, and evolution.
I was captivated by the stars when I was a child. I still enjoy going out for (non-work-related)
stargazing every once in a while. Besides stars, I also have a passion for music. I have played
violin, viola and cello in various orchestras and string ensembles as I move from China to Canada
and then the US. Most recently, I played viola and cello in Caltech’s wonderful Chamber Music program.
Automatic Classification and Anomaly Detection of Supernova Spectra in ZTF Bright Transient Survey
My name is Abhiram Krishna, an upcoming senior at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Dharwad, India. I am pursuing a Bachelor of Technology in Engineering Physics. I am extremely passionate about physics and have explored various branches of physics including Astronomy, Quantum Information, Experimental Condensed Matter, Semiconductor Physics. I spend most of time stargazing using my small telescope. I have also been founding member and secretary of the space data science club at IIT Dharwad. ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) captivated my interests in space science and astronomy.
Abhiram Krishna
IIT, Dharwad
Yu-Jing Qin
Caltech
I’m Yu-Jing Qin, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech working with the ZTF collaboration. My current focus is the ZTF Bright Transient Survey, the largest spectroscopic census of distant explosions. Besides astronomy, I enjoy classical music, opera, and photography. Becoming an astronomer was a childhood dream of mine, and my move to the West Coast was inspired by the stories of Edwin Hubble and George Hale.
Creating a Dataset of “Reals” for the WINTER Real-bogus Classifier
My name is Mallika Sheshadri and I am currently a 12th grader at Pasadena High School. This summer, I worked with post-doc Tomás Ahumada and fellow high schooler Sofia Tejada in Prof. Mansi Kasliwal's lab to create a dataset to train the real-bogus classifier for the WINTER telescope by crossmatching WINTER alerts to data from other telescopes, particularly ZTF. I've always loved astronomy, and science in general, but my interest skyrocketed about a year ago when I fell into a Wikipedia rabbit hole on Lyman-Alpha radiation, which turned into a really fun science fair project! In my free time, I love to read, play music, and build miniatures.
Mallika Sheshadri
Pasadena High School
Tomas Ahumada
Caltech
Tomas Ahumada is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech, working on multi-messenger astronomy. When he is not searching for gravitational-wave optical counterparts, he hunts for relativistic explosions associated to high-energy events, such as gamma-ray bursts and X-ray transients, with the Zwicky Transient Facility and the WINTER telescope.
Analyzing Fast-Moving Objects with ZTF and SRO Observations for Precise Orbit Determination
My name is Tanvi Batra, and I’m a junior at UC Berkeley, where I study Physics and Astrophysics. Growing up in Southern California, I played many sports over the years, particularly staying passionate about soccer. My interest in Physics and Astronomy sparked after visiting Griffith Observatory several times and seeing my mom teach Physics to high school students.
Tanvi Barta
University of California, Berkeley
Thomas Prince
California Institute of Technology
Thomas Prince is the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology
holding also a joint appointment with Caltech’s NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as a senior research scientist.
Prof Prince is currently the director and Allen V.C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership
Chair for the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech.
George Helou is the executive director of IPAC and a research professor in physics at Caltech.
ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation and a collaboration including the following universities
: University of
Maryland, College Park, USA; University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, USA; Drexel University, USA; Cornell University, USA; University of California, Berkeley; University of North Caroline Chapel Hill, USA;
Institute of Science and Technology, Austria;
IPAC, Caltech, USA; Caltech, USA. Operations are conducted
by COO, IPAC and University of Washington.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.