The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)
Peter J. Wheatley, Richard G. West, Michael R. Goad, James S. Jenkins,, Don L. Pollacco, Didier Queloz, Heike Rauer, Stephane Udry, Christopher A., Watson, Bruno Chazelas, Philipp Eigmuller, Gregory Lambert, Ludovic Genolet,, James McCormac, Simon Walker, David J. Armstrong

TL;DR
NGTS is a ground-based survey utilizing an array of small telescopes at Cerro Paranal to detect smaller exoplanets around bright stars with high photometric precision, complementing space missions.
Contribution
It introduces a dedicated, high-precision ground-based system optimized for detecting small exoplanets around bright stars, building on previous survey methods.
Findings
Achieved 0.1% photometric precision in 1 hour for stars brighter than I=13.
Operates with an array of twelve 20cm telescopes at Cerro Paranal.
First light was in 2015, full operations began in 2016.
Abstract
We describe the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), which is a ground-based project searching for transiting exoplanets orbiting bright stars. NGTS builds on the legacy of previous surveys, most notably WASP, and is designed to achieve higher photometric precision and hence find smaller planets than have previously been detected from the ground. It also operates in red light, maximising sensitivity to late K and early M dwarf stars. The survey specifications call for photometric precision of 0.1 per cent in red light over an instantaneous field of view of 100 square degrees, enabling the detection of Neptune-sized exoplanets around Sun-like stars and super-Earths around M dwarfs. The survey is carried out with a purpose-built facility at Cerro Paranal, Chile, which is the premier site of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). An array of twelve 20cm f/2.8 telescopes fitted with…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
