The Survey

Introduction

The Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey is a synoptic astronomical exploration that covers thirty three thousand square degrees of the sky in order discover rare and interesting transient phenomina. The survey utilizes data taken by the three dedicated telescopes of the highly successful Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) NEO project. CRTS detects and openly publishes all transients within minutes of observation so that all astronomers may follow ongoing events.

Automated Analysis

CRTS builds on the work performed for the Palomar Quest survey and continues to pave the way for deeper upcoming transient surveys (LSST), by automating the event discovery and classification processes so that robust decisions can enable intelligent human and robotic follow up.

Rapid Response

In order to fully understand rapidly varying transient astronomical behaviour, automated alerting and follow-up is a necessity. Rapid transient science is enabled by the affiliated projects VOEventNet and SkyAlert.
• VOEventNet is a means of transporting astronomical events to interested subscribers, automatically within minutes of discovery.
• SkyAlert enables users to perform complex queries about discoveries in order to receive personally tailored and filtered event streams.

CRTS also publishes VOEvents directly to the general public via Google Sky in kml.

Survey Telescopes

MLS

CSS

SSS


The three telescopes used by CRTS.

Open Data

CRTS will soon make the entire CSS dataset public so that the astronomical community can better assess the nature of transients and other variable sources. In the mean time, requests for small amounts of data relating to time-critical astronomical events can be made to us directly.