TL;DR
This paper reviews the scientific achievements of the Palomar Transient Factory and its successor, Zwicky Transient Facility, highlighting technological innovations and future prospects in transient astronomy.
Contribution
It summarizes lessons learned from PTF/iPTF and details the design and scientific goals of the new ZTF survey and its alert system innovations.
Findings
PTF/iPTF provided valuable transient data and lessons for future surveys.
ZTF offers an order of magnitude faster survey speed.
ZTF prototypes alert stream technologies for LSST.
Abstract
In March 2017, the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) ceased operations. I take this occasion to review the scientific returns from iPTF and its predecessor survey, the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), and to summarize the lessons learned. Succeeding iPTF on the Palomar Observatory 48-inch Schmidt telescope is the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a new survey with an order of magnitude faster survey speed that is now being commissioned. I describe the design and scientific rationale for ZTF. ZTF is prototyping new alert stream technologies being explored by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to distribute millions of transient alerts per night to downstream science users. I describe the design of the alert system and discuss it in the context of the wider LSST and community broker ecosystem.
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