The new camera is made of 16 CCDs of 6144×6160 pixels each, enabling each exposure to cover an area of 47 square degrees. The Zwicky Transient Facility is designed to image the entire northern sky in three nights and scan the plane of the Milky Way twice each night to a limiting magnitude of 20.5 (r band, 5σ).[3][4]
The amount of data produced by ZTF is expected to be ten times larger than its predecessor, the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory.[5] ZTF's large data will allow it to act as a prototype for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (formerly Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) that is expected to be in full operation in 2024 and will accumulate ten times more data than ZTF.[3][1]
The first confirmed findings from the ZTF project were reported on 7 February 2018,[9] with the discovery of 2018 CL, a small near-Earth asteroid.[10]
Discoveries
On 9 May 2019, ZTF discovered its first comet, C/2019 J2 (Palomar), a long-period comet.[11]
A search of the ZTF's archive identified images of the interstellar comet2I/Borisov as early as December 13, 2018, extending observations back eight months.[12][13]
^Smith, Roger M.; Dekany, Richard G.; Bebek, Christopher; Bellm, Eric; Bui, Khanh; Cromer, John; Gardner, Paul; Hoff, Matthew; Kaye, Stephen (2014-07-14). "The Zwicky transient facility observing system"(PDF). In Ramsay, Suzanne K; McLean, Ian S; Takami, Hideki (eds.). Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V. Vol. 9147. International Society for Optics and Photonics. p. 914779. Bibcode:2014SPIE.9147E..79S. doi:10.1117/12.2070014. S2CID9106668.