Fast Transients, Superflares and Exoplanet Habitability: Exploring the Minute-Cadence Sky with the Evryscope Fast Transient Engine

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This project will observe the entire night sky to search for short time scale changes (less than two minutes) in the brightness of objects using small telescopes located in the northern and southern hemispheres. The researchers will develop software to detect these changes in real time and send alerts to other astronomers to enable them to follow up with their own observations. The project will study giant flares on stars that could impact planets in orbit about them, and also to study the rate of flashes that are the result of materials being burnt up in the earth's atmosphere. Other astronomers will be helped by receiving alerts to such changes in the sky. The scientists involved in this project are also developing a planetarium exhibit to provide the public with information on the evolving field of time resolved astronomy.Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will conduct a systematic investigation of the entire rapid transient sky using Evryscopes that will be coordinated with spectroscopic observations using the SOAR Telescope. The Evryscope telescopes, coupled with the Evryscope Fast Transit Engine (EFTE), a newly-developed low-latency transient-detection pipeline, are capable of searching for rapid transient events over 16,500 square degrees of the sky every two minutes. This will be coupled with a machine-learning vetting system that will reduce false positives to low levels. This new capability will enable the high-speed detection and follow-up for events such as superflares. These are giant stellar flares that have serious, but as-yet poorly-constrained, effects on the habitability of planets around cool stars. Additionally, the researchers will perform the first detailed characterization of transient orbital-debris fast-flashes, which form an important foreground for high cadence sky surveys.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.