Bright Transient Survey

The ZTF Bright Transient Survey (BTS) is by far the largest spectroscopic supernova survey ever conducted. Since June of 2018 we have been surveying the entire nighttime Northern sky every 2-3 nights in two filters and acquiring spectra of (almost) every time-varying, nonmoving object brighter than 18.5 mag that is not a Galactic source or an AGN, providing a complete and unbiased view of the dynamic optical sky. During ZTF phase I (2017-2020), the BTS has catalogued almost 4000 supernovae. In ZTF phase II (2021 - 2024), we expect to increase this total to almost 10000, including hundreds of "exotic" transients: tidal disruption events, superluminous supernovae, and the like. We have also provided classifications for most of the more than 5000 spectrocopically confirmed obejcts in our survey.

Alert data (including preliminary photometry) is released in real time via ZTF alert brokers and spectra and classifications are announced nightly via the Transient Name Server.

BTS website