Astronomy.com - August 24, 2009
http://uanews.org/node/26922The Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey will be the first and only total sky survey available over the Internet to both professional and amateur astronomers worldwide.
Astronomers have been mining a mother lode of astronomical data from The University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) and finding more "optical transients" than they can characterize during the past 17 months.
They have found more than 700 unique "optical transients," or objects that change brightness on time scales of minutes to years.
They've also found 177 supernovae. That's more than dedicated supernova surveys have turned up during that time.
Their discoveries include the most energetic supernova ever seen and a nearby stellar explosion in the Antennae galaxies that is helping astronomers refine the cosmic distance scale. Unlike most dedicated supernova surveys, CSS telescopes cover the entire sky each month, allowing the team to record supernovae in dim galaxies where others aren't looking.
The bonanza of transient optical objects detected in the CSS data also includes:
Capturing such fleeting astronomical events is not what the CSS is primarily about. NASA funds the CSS to search for potentially hazardous Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids and comets, also called near-Earth objects (NEOs).
- 185 cataclysmic variable stars, which is about three out of every four such objects discovered over the same time span and more than the Sloan Digital Sky Survey found in 6 years. This result suggests that cataclysmic variables are more common than previously thought.
32 blazars, or beamed active galactic nuclei. These very compact and highly variable energy sources are among the most violent phenomena in the universe.
About 30 stellar flares, which are large explosions in stellar atmospheres.
About 100 other highly erratic light sources that include active galactic nuclei, high proper motion stars, and sources that remain unknown.
The CSS is the most successful NEO survey that exists. CSS observers have found about 70 percent of all NEOs discovered over the past 3.5 years.