Palomar Gattini-IR is a near-IR survey telescope at Palomar Observatory. Though it only has an aperture of 30 cm, it boasts a 25 sq deg field of view --- 40 times larger than any other existing infrared telescope. Palomar Gattini-IR is designed to survey the entire accessible sky (9,000 sq deg) to 16 AB mag (J band) every two nights. With survey operations in full swing, PGIR is facilitating a treasure trove of stellar science in the Milky Way. Read our papers at this ADS library link . Palomar Gattini-IR is a pathfinder for more advanced systems to eventually be constructed at the polar sites of the South Pole, Antarctica and near Eureka on Ellesmere Island, Canada, which will enable observations out to K band. Listen to a lecture by Mansi Kasliwal here and graduate student Kishalay De here.

Engineering Team

Jill Burnham

Alex Delacroix

Timothee Greffe

David Hale

Dan McKenna

Roger Smith

Science Team

Scott Adams

Michael Ashley

Kishalay De

Matt Hankins

Mansi Kasliwal

Ryan Lau

Anna Moore

Eran Ofek

Jeno Sokoloski

Jamie Soon

Roberto Soria

Tony Travouillon

Funding

Australian National University

Australian Research Council

California Institute of Technology

Heising-Simons Foundation

Mount Cuba Foundation

United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation

Coverage Maps

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Science Highlights

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Operating in the near-infrared where dust extinction is low, Gattini-IR is performing the first unbiased census of novae in the Milky Way. Novae arise from thermonuclear explosions on the surfaces of white dwarfs (dead remnants of stars like our Sun), and are believed to play a crucial role in enriching the Galaxy with elements like Lithium (used in batteries) as well as lead to the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae. The figure shows the positions of novae detected by Gattini-IR as stars overlaid on the distribution of dust in the Milky way. The circles show novae detected in optical samples, that tend to systematically miss novae near the dustiest and densest regions of the Galactic mid-plane. Using these capabilities, Gattini-IR has provided one of the strongest constraints on the Galactic nova rate (De et al. 2021)

Most stars are born inside dense clouds of gas and dust, that are nearly invisble in the optical bands due to dust obscuration. Furthermore, it is known that the star formation process does not proceed steadily with time, but involves large outbursts of mass accretion that fuel outbursts in the young star. Understanding these outbursts not only informs us about how stars form around us but also constrain how planets might from these accretion disks around the stars. Operating in the infrared, Gattini-IR is capable of finding extremely obscured young star outbursts that are formed inside these dust clouds. Shown in the figure is PGIR 20dci that was detected as an IR transient in Gattini-IR images (on the top) inside a dust cloud (visible in the PS1 image). With higher resolution infrared imaging, the source was deemed to be a new nebula of gas that had lit up in the infrared (shown in the lower panel), and more than a million times fainter in the optical bands (Hillenbrand et al. 2021)

R Corona Borealis variables are a unique class of variable stars that are hydrogen deficient and have atmospheres dominated by elements like helium and carbon. Their peculiar compositions are suggested to be a result of their formation process, that likely involves the merger of a Carbon-Oxygen white dwarf (dead remnants of stars) and a helium white dwarf. These merger products thus offer crucial insights into Type Ia supernovae (some of which are believed to arise from white dwarf mergers) as well as estimate the population of gravitational wave sources that could be detected by observatories like LISA. Due to their peculiar composition, they sporadically form dust in their atmospheres, and are generally covered with dense layers of dust that make them very faint in the optical bands. Gattini-IR has the unique capability to discover and study the variability in these dust obscured stars (left figure) due to its infrared sensitivity, and has already discovered nearly 150 candidate stars visible from Palomar Observatory (Karambelkar et al. 2021)