The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public–private enterprise, is a new time-domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg2 field of view and an 8 second readout time. It is well positioned in the development of time-domain astronomy, offering operations at 10% of the scale and style of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) with a single 1-m class survey telescope. The public surveys will cover the observable northern sky every three nights in g and r filters and the visible Galactic plane every night in g and r. Alerts generated by these surveys are sent in real time to brokers. A consortium of universities that provided funding (“partnership”) are undertaking several boutique surveys. The combination of these surveys producing one million alerts per night allows for exploration of transient and variable astrophysical phenomena brighter than r ∼ 20.5 on timescales of minutes to years. We describe the primary science objectives driving ZTF, including the physics of supernovae and relativistic explosions, multi-messenger astrophysics, supernova cosmology, active galactic nuclei, and tidal disruption events, stellar variability, and solar system objects.

General relativity 1 predicts that short orbital period binaries emit significant gravitational radiation, and the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) 2 is expected to 1

Interaction-powered supernovae (SNe) explode within an optically thick circumstellar medium (CSM) that could be ejected during eruptive events. To identify and characterize such pre-explosion outbursts, we produce forcedphotometry light curves for 196 interacting SNe, mostly of Type IIn, detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility between early 2018 and 2020 June. Extensive tests demonstrate that we only expect a few false detections among the 70,000 analyzed pre-explosion images after applying quality cuts and bias corrections. We detect precursor eruptions prior to 18 Type IIn SNe and prior to the Type Ibn SN 2019uo. Precursors become brighter and more frequent in the last months before the SN and month-long outbursts brighter than magnitude −13 occur prior to 25% (5-69%, 95% confidence range) of all Type IIn SNe within the final three months before the explosion. With radiative energies of up to 10 49 erg, precursors could eject ∼1 M e of material. Nevertheless, SNe with detected precursors are not significantly more luminous than other SNe IIn, and the characteristic narrow hydrogen lines in their spectra typically originate from earlier, undetected mass-loss events. The long precursor durations require ongoing energy injection, and they could, for example, be powered by interaction or by a continuum-driven wind. Instabilities during the neon-and oxygen-burning phases are predicted to launch precursors in the final years to months before the explosion; however, the brightest precursor is 100 times more energetic than anticipated.

Using high-cadence observations from the Zwicky Transient Facility at low Galactic latitudes, we have discovered a new class of pulsating, hot, compact stars. We have found four candidates, exhibiting blue colors (g −r ≤ −0.1 mag), pulsation amplitudes of > 5%, and pulsation periods of 200−475 sec. Fourier transforms of the lightcurves show only one dominant frequency. Phase-resolved spectroscopy for three objects reveals significant radial velocity, T eff and log(g) variations over the pulsation cycle, consistent with large amplitude radial oscillations. The mean T eff and log(g) for these stars are consistent with hot subdwarf B (sdB) effective temperatures and surface gravities. We calculate evolutionary tracks using MESA and adiabatic pulsations using GYRE for low-mass helium-core pre-white dwarfs and low mass helium-burning stars. Comparison of low-order radial oscillation mode periods with the observed pulsation periods show better agreement with the pre-white dwarf models. Therefore, we suggest that these new pulsators and Blue Large-Amplitude Pulsators (BLAPs) could be members of the same class of pulsators, composed of young ≈ 0.25 − 0.35 M ⊙ helium-core pre-white dwarfs.

While it is clear that Type Ia supernovae (SNe) are the result of thermonuclear explosions in C/O white dwarfs (WDs), a great deal remains uncertain about the binary companion that facilitates the explosive disruption of the WD. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of a large, unique data set of 127 SNe Ia with exquisite coverage by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). High-cadence (six observations per night) ZTF observations allow us to measure the SN rise time and examine its initial evolution. We develop a Bayesian framework to model the early rise as a power law in time, which enables the inclusion of priors in our model. For a volume-limited subset of normal SNe Ia, we find that the mean power-law index is consistent with 2 in the r ZTF -band (a =  2.01 0.02 r ), as expected in the expanding fireball model. There are, however, individual SNe that are clearly inconsistent with a = 2 r . We estimate a mean rise time of 18.9 days (with a range extending from ∼15 to 22 days), though this is subject to the adopted prior. We identify an important, previously unknown, bias whereby the rise times for higherredshift SNe within a flux-limited survey are systematically underestimated. This effect can be partially alleviated if the power-law index is fixed to α=2, in which case we estimate a mean rise time of 21.7 days (with a range from ∼18 to 23 days). The sample includes a handful of rare and peculiar SNe Ia. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of lessons learned from the ZTF sample that can eventually be applied to observations from the Vera C.Rubin Observatory.