Title: Exploring the optical transient sky with small aperture telescopes

Speaker: Yize Dong 董一泽

Institute: University of California, Davis

Host: Siyi Feng

Time: 14:30-16:30, Thursday, October, 06

Location: Physics Building 552

Abstract:

Understanding how the deaths of stars lead to different supernova types, along with the underlying physics of the explosion, is one of the fundamental quests of astrophysics, affecting everything from the growth of structure in galaxies to the creation of the elements necessary for life.

We are conducting a supernova search (Distance Less Than 40 Mpc survey; the DLT40 survey), to search for supernovae in the nearby galaxies. With four telescopes in the globe, our program is more robust to the weather and enables a sub-day cadence survey in both hemispheres. Once a supernova is discovered, the follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations will be immediately triggered, enabling studies of the progenitor of the supernova. In 2022, a new synoptic wide-field survey, BlackGEM, will be starting in the South Hemisphere. BlackGEM will image the sky on timescales from minutes to hours down to 22nd mag, which will enable us to explore the largely unknown parameter space of fast evolving transients.

In this talk, I will briefly summarize the status of DLT40 survey and highlight some of our recent discoveries, as well as our future Gravitational-wave counterpart search program. Then, I will talk about how BlackGEM will help us study the fast evolving transients, a field that is still in its infancy.

Bio:

2013-2017  B.S. in Astronomy, Xiamen University

2018-present  Ph.D in Astronomy, University of California, Davis