The Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS)

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。Djorgovski博士和他的团队将使用来自美国宇航局资助的卡塔利娜巡天（CSS）的数据流来搜索瞬变天体，包括耀斑星、伽马射线暴和强微透镜事件。这项调查使用了亚利桑那州的两台宽视场望远镜和澳大利亚的一台望远镜，对太阳系中的物体进行分类，特别是轨道上靠近地球的小行星。该团队将建立一个开放的光学瞬变发现引擎，将CSS图像与同一片天空的早期图像进行比较，并确定变亮的来源。该团队将在通过虚拟天文台协议访问的公共服务器上提供结果数据流，以便更广泛的社区可以立即进行后续观测。研究生和本科生将通过参与研究得到训练。该团队计划与微软的全球望远镜项目合作，以业余天文学家和公众都可以访问的形式呈现事件流。该项目将是第一个允许快速跟踪如此大范围的明亮瞬变光源的项目，并可以作为开发科学策略和程序的试验台。由此产生的科学成果具有潜在的变革性，并将为建设和运营未来设施（如大型天气巡天望远镜）的决策提供信息。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Dr. Djorgovski and his team will use the data stream from the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) to search for transient astronomical objects including flare stars, gamma-ray bursts, and strong microlensing events. That survey uses two wide-field telescopes in Arizona and one in Australia to catalog objects in the Solar System, particularly asteroids on orbits that bring them close to Earth. The team will build an open optical-transient discovery engine to compare image from CSS with earlier images of the same piece of sky and identify sources that have brightened. The team will provide the resulting data stream on a public server accessed by Virtual Observatory protocols, so that it is available to the wider community for immediate followup observations. Graduate and undergraduate students will be trained by participating in the research. The team plans to work with Microsoft's World Wide Telescope project to present the event stream in a form accessible to amateur astronomers and the general public. This project will be the first that allows rapid followup of such a wide range of bright transient sources, and can act as a testbed to develop scientific strategies and procedures. The resulting science is potentially transformative, and will inform decisions on building and operating future facilities such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.