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PanSTARRS monitoring of the K2 Campaign 16 field

News article posted on by Geert Barentsen

Because the currently-ongoing K2 Campaign 16 is partially dedicated to the Supernova Experiment, the project has acquired PanSTARRS time to monitor the entire field every night in two filters (cycling through g+r and g+i) for the purpose of providing early alerts for transients in the field. The alerts are made public instantly via the Transient Name Server, where users can receive K2-specific alerts by signing up for the "KEGS-C16" alerts category.

During the first week of C16, PanSTARRS has already identified two events in galaxies which are currently being observed by Kepler:

  • 2017iws: a Type Ia supernova (z=0.09).
  • 2017ixf: a Type II supernova (z=0.05).

Members of the community who wish to stay up to date with this activity are encouraged to subscribe to the K2 Supernova mailing list. Note that several members of this list have signed up to a follow-up agreement which is intended to encourage collaboration.

The imaging data collected by PanSTARRS for K2 is expected to be released to the public no later than June 1st, 2018. The release will include images in g, r, and i for the entire field to a typical depth of 21st magnitude and with a typical cadence better than 1-2 days. These PanSTARRS data are expected to benefit multiple galactic and extragalactic investigations associated with Campaign 16.