Cosmic Newsflash

Black Hole Flare is Biggest and Most Distant Seen

Graham, J Matthew et al

ZTF has co-discovered the most distant and brightest flare from a black hole eating away a massive star. The event has taken place in the distant universe 10 billion light years away and at its brightest, it release the energy equivalent to 100 trillion suns.

ZTF catches a never-before-seen flare of a supernova

Schulze, Steve et al.; Nature

A large team of astronomers, led by ZTF partners at the Northwestern university stumbled upon a unique explosion of a supernova from a massive star back in Sept 2021. After extensive analysis of the supernova using data from multiple telescopes around the world, the astronomers believe they have seen for the first time the inner layers of a dying star.

Prediscovery activity of a new interstellar object

Quanzhi Ye et al.,

The authors report on the prediscovery observations and constraints of the new interstellar comet 3I/2025 N1 (ATLAS), made by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), for the inbound leg of the comet out to a heliocentric distance of rh=17au, or approximately a year before its discovery.

Interacting supernova coincident with a high energy neutrino

Stein, Robert et al.,

Astrophysical high-energy (TeV-PeV) neutrinos were first discovered in 2013, but their origin remains largely unknown. In this paper, authors present SN 2023uqf, a supernova found in coincidence with high-energy neutrino IC231004A, as part of a systematic optical follow-up program with the Zwicky Transient Facility.

A machine learning tool to predict kilonova light curves

Plestkova, Natalya, et al.,

The authors have developed a public tool to predict kilonova light curves using simulated low-latency alert data from the International Gravitational Wave Network during observing runs 4 (O4) and 5 (O5). It uses a bidirectional long-short-term memory (LSTM) model to forecast kilonova light curves from binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole mergers in ZTF and Rubin's LSST filters. The models are publicly available and can help plan follow-up of candidate events discovered by current and next-generation public surveys.

ZTF search for circumstellar debris transits in white dwarfs

Bhattacharjee, Soumyadeep et al.,

White dwarfs (WDs) showing transits from orbiting planetary debris provide significant insights into the structure and dynamics of debris disks, which are eventually accreted to produce metal pollution. This is a rare class of objects with only eight such reported systems. In this work, the authors perform a systematic search for such systems within 500 pc in the Gaia-eDR3 catalog of WDs using the light curves from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and present six new candidates.

Studying ice water in 243P/NEAT and other comets

Kelley, Michael et al.,

ZTF partners from the University of Maryland who study solar system bodies have observed several comet outbursts which provide scientists with the opportunity to study the properties of water ice - a fundamental building block in solar system objects.

ZTF observetions of a neutron star merger candidate

Ahumada, Tomas et al.,

Authors present the ZTF search in response to S250206dm, a bona fide event with a false alarm rate of one in 25 years, detected by the International Gravitational Wave Network (IGWN). Although the event was significant, the nature of the compact objects involved remains unclear, with at least one likely neutron star. ZTF covered 68% of the localization region and no likely optical counterpart was identified. The paper provides details about the ZTF strategy, potential candidates, and the observations that helped rule out candidates, including sources circulated by other collaborations.