# The Zwicky Transient Facility: Surveys and Scheduler

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scheduling algorithm for the Zwicky Transient Facility that optimizes observation plans to maximize transient discovery rates by considering various observational factors.

## Contribution

It presents a novel Integer Linear Programming-based scheduling algorithm that improves survey efficiency and transient detection capability.

## Key findings

- Optimized observation scheduling reduces telescope slewing time.
- Enhanced transient discovery rate through weighted optimization metrics.
- Successful implementation on Zwicky Transient Facility surveys demonstrates practical benefits.

## Abstract

We present a novel algorithm for scheduling the observations of time-domain imaging surveys. Our Integer Linear Programming approach optimizes an observing plan for an entire night by assigning targets to temporal blocks, enabling strict control of the number of exposures obtained per field and minimizing filter changes. A subsequent optimization step minimizes slew times between each observation. Our optimization metric self-consistently weights contributions from time-varying airmass, seeing, and sky brightness to maximize the transient discovery rate. We describe the implementation of this algorithm on the surveys of the Zwicky Transient Facility and present its on-sky performance.