Data Products Overview
The camera utilizes the entire focal plane of 47 square degree of the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope, providing the largest instantaneous field-of-view of any camera on a telescope of aperture greater than 0.5 m: each image will cover 235 times the area of the full moon.
ZTF builds on the proven heritage of the PTF survey to provide more than an order of magnitude increase in survey speed at low risk.
An innovative optical design maintains image quality with 2.0" FWHM over the entire focal plane. Speedy modern readout electronics add only 10 seconds of overhead per exposure.
Several conference proceedings describing ZTF are available: Bellm 2014, Smith et al. 2014, Dekany et al. 2016, Bellm and Kulkarni 2017.
The ZTF Science Data System (ZSDS) is housed at IPAC-Caltech. This consists of the data processing pipelines, data archives, infrastructure for long term curation, and the services for data retrieval and visualization. An overview is given in Masci et al. 2018.
A set of instrument papers have been published in a special Focus Issue of PASP:
The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results (Bellm et al. 2019)
The Zwicky Transient Facility: Data Processing, Products, and Archive (Masci et al. 2019)
Machine Learning for the ZTF (Mahabal et al. 2019)
The Zwicky Transient Facility Alert Distribution System (Patterson et al. 2019)
2018 April 23
ZTF has now started science operations (2018 March 17 UT) collecting data for the MSIP, partnership, and Caltech observing programs. The robotic filter exchanger has entered Phase 3 which means nightly operations testing (it has begun to be used). The focus and guide system are in active development (these are needed to ensure a uniform image quality across the night and for exposures longer than 300s respectively). The alert infrastructure remains in commissioning with several components still under active refinement including: reliability scores from machine-learned vetting, and the Kafka-based alert distribution system. The start of the public alert stream from the public surveys is intended for late May/early June.
An overview of the ZTF Science Data System (ZSDS) is given in:
Pipelines, data products (including alert packets), product retrieval, formats, and usage are described in more detail in:
Data can be accessed and visualized using the services and tools available on the following page:
| Telescope | Samuel Oschin 48-inch Schmidt, Palomar Observatory |
| Field of View |
47 square degrees |
| Detectors | 16 e2v 6k x 6k CCD231-C6 |
| Pixel size |
15 micron |
| Pixel scale |
1.0"/pixel |
| Median Delivered Image Quality |
2.0" FWHM |
| Exposure Time | 30 sec |
| Readout Time | 10 sec |
| Median Time Between Exposures | 15 sec |
|
Median Single Visit Depth |
20.4 mag (all lunar phases) |
| Filters | ZTF g, ZTF r, ZTF i |
| Areal Survey Rate | 3750 square degrees/hour |
