Welcome to our Science Vlog
Hear lead authors from the ZTF team present their latest scientific publications.
What early UV light curves reveal about the progenitors of Type II supernovae
Date: Jan, 2024
In our latest ZTF science vlog, we hear from Ido Irani, a PhD student at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel who chased the early UV light from Type II supernovae with the Zwicky Transient Facility and NASA's Swift telescope in space. Ido combined data for 35 supernovae to study the radius of the progenitor stars and compare it with theory.
Read Publication Contact AuthorSkyportal - one science-discovery platform to connect them all
Date: May,2023
In this edition of the ZTF science vlog, Michael Coughlin (an assistant prof at the UMN, USA) talks about a paper describing Skyportal - an astronomy open-source platform designed to efficiently discover interesting transients, manage follow-up, perform characterization, and visualize the results, all in one application. Skyportal has been used by the ZTF community for years as its main discovery platform and its scalability make it a unique asset in the Very C. Rubin observatory era.
Read Publication Contact AuthorAre collapsars sites of heavy element production?
Date: March, 2023
PhD student Shreya Anand (Caltech) describes a systematic study of a set of supernovae associated with collapsars - stars that have died due to gravitational collapse turning into a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. The lightcurve analysis shows no compelling evidence that these types of stars can be a production site of heavy elements
Read Publication Contact AuthorHAFFET - a new tool for model vs data comparison for large supernova datasets
Date: March, 2023
Sheng Yang, a PhD student at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, presents a new Python-based software package that allows users to work with supernova datasets from any open survey and make a statistically consistent comparison between models and data. This tool will become increasingly important in the era of Vera Rubin LSST survey.
Read Publication Contact AuthorA ZTF sample of low-mass supernovae and what it reveals about the mysterious fate of these stars
Date: Nov, 2022
The next issue of our science vlog brings you Kaustav Das, a PhD student at Caltech whose latest paper describes the analysis of a sample of strongly-stripped Calcium-rich Type IIb Supernovae from the Zwicky Transient Facility. The fate of such low-mass stars in still a mystery and growing samples such as this one can reveal more about how these stars die and what they turn into.
Read Publication Contact AuthorA rare supernova SN 2022oqm blasts out fast material a few weeks before explosion
Date: Oct, 2022
In this science vlog, Ido Irani from the Weizmann Institute of Science gives us an excellent summary of a peculiar Type Ic supernova SN2020oqm. Discovered less than a day from explosion, it reveals a fast moving C/O circumstellar material and a Ca-rich late light curve.
Read Publication Contact AuthorIs SN2020jgb supernova holding the key to understanding these cosmic candles?
Date: Sept, 2022
In the next ZTF science vlog, Chang Liu from the Northwestern University walks us through the discovery of a peculiar Type Ia supernova, dubbed SN2020jgb. While a detonation of a thin helium shell on a white dwarf is believe to be a plausible mechanism for these supernovae, variations in the size/mass of the white dwarf and the helium shell may explain some of the peculiar supernovae observed lately. The analysis reveals SN2020jgb as a thick helium double detonation supernovae and it's the first such object discovered in a start forming galaxy.
Read Publication Contact AuthorLessons from the ZTF neutrino multi-messenger campaign
Date: Jun, 2022
In this science vlog, Robert Stein (Caltech) shares exciting results from the first 24 neutrino followup campaigns with ZTF. These include the first association of a high energy neutrino with a tidal disruption event (published in Feb 2021 in Nature Astronomy) and another fresh paper published in June 2022 in the Physical Review Letters describing a second association.
Read Publication Contact AuthorSupernova Siblings in the Zwicky Transient Facility Survey
Date: March, 2022
Melissa Graham from the University of Washington, Seattle has sieved through ZTF data in search of supernova siblings - two or more supernovae in the same parent galaxy. The analysis of her sample confirms known facts about these objects and yields new surpises as well.
Read Publication Contact AuthorZTF captures the lastest sample of the brightest supernovae
Date: March, 2022
In this vlog, PhD student Zhihao Chen presents the largest sample of superluminous supernovae. A comprehensive lightcurve analysis sheds more light on the mechanisms that fuel these super bright cosmic flares.
Read Publication Contact AuthorHow ZTF Type Ia supernova sample can advance cosmology
Date: Jan, 2022
Suhail Dhawan from Cambridge University in the UK, summarizes his latest study on how the current and growing sample of Type Ia supernovae discovered by ZTF can answer important questions in precision cosmology. Early phase sampling , large statistics with a single system and a uniformly observed all-sky Hubble flow sample offer tantalizing opportunities to improve our cosmology models.
Read Publication Contact AuthorDiscovering microlensing events with the ZTF
Date: Dec, 2021
Tony Rodriguez, a PhD student at Caltech talks about his recent work on discovering of microlensing events in the ZTF public survey data and using these discoveries to ultimately detect and study "dark objects" in the universe such as free floating planets, brown dwarfs, and elusive stellar mass black holes.
Read Publication Contact AuthorDiscovery of a stellar mass black hole candidate
Date: Nov, 2021
Originally first discovered in X-ray, black hole binaries can now be discovered directly in optical thanks to wide-field optical surveys such as the ZTF. In this science blog, Yuhan Yao, a PhD student at Caltech shares the discovery of AT2019wey, a candidate black hole binary and the follow up multiwavelength analysis.
Read Publication Contact AuthorThe faintest of them all
Date: Oct, 2021
Lead author Viraj Karambelkar (PhD student at Caltech) talks about the discovery of SN2021fcg which is the faintest supernova of Type Iax discovered to date. Why and how is this discovery helping us understand the evolution of stars?
Read Publication Contact AuthorTracing the cosmic web with supernovae
Date: Sept, 2021
Lead author Eleni Tsaprazi (PhD at the OKC, Sweden) talks about the potential and first result of using large supernovae surveys to explore the large-scale structure of the universe at high redshifts.
Read Publication Contact AuthorSearching for fast transients in real time
Date: Sept, 2021
Lead author Igor Ansdreoni (UMD/NASA GSFC) and co-author Michael Coughlin (U of Minnesota) present a new pipeline for the search of fast transients in real time and discuss first results during LIGO observing run O3.
Read Publication Contact AuthorRapidly Evolving Extragalactic Transients in ZTF
June, 2021
Anna Ho, a Miller postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley shares the three main take aways from her receint publication "The Photometric and Spectroscopic Evolution of Rapidly Evolving Extragalactic Transients in ZTF"
Read Publication Contact AuthorNear real-time classification of Type Ia supernovae with deep learning algorithms
Date: May, 2021
In this video, lead author Christoffer Fremling (postdoctoral fellow at Caltech) presents his latest work on a deep learning system for automated classifications of Type Ia supernovae. Dubbed SNIascore, the system can classify spectra and report confirmed supernovae to the Transient Name Server almost in real time!
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