Overview
The PTF camera only used a small fraction (7.3 square degrees) of the available 47 square degree focal plane of the Palomar 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope. A new camera with 16 6k x 6k CCDs fills the focal plane, providing a sixfold increase in the sky captured in each image.
This camera will have the world's widest field of view on a telescope larger than a half meter: each image will cover 235 times the area of the full moon.
An innovative optical design maintains PTF's image quality over the much wider field. Speedy modern readout electronics add only 10 seconds of overhead per exposure. Well-tested iPTF data reduction pipelines will scale up straightforwardly to ZTF's higher data rates.
ZTF will build on the proven heritage of the PTF survey to provide more than an order of magnitude increase in survey speed at low risk.
Several conference proceedings describing ZTF are available: Bellm 2014, Smith et al. 2014, Dekany et al. 2016, Bellm and Kulkarni 2017. A formal instrument paper will be published after commissioning.
Technical Specifications
| Telescope |
Samuel Oschin 48-inch Schmidt, Palomar Observatory |
| Field of View |
47 square degrees |
| Detectors | 16 e2v 6k x 6k CCD231-C6 |
| Pixel size |
15 micron |
| Pixel scale |
1.0"/pixel |
| Median Delivered Image Quality |
2.0" FWHM |
| Exposure Time | 30 sec |
| Readout Time | 10 sec |
| Median Time Between Exposures | 15 sec |
|
Median Single Visit Depth |
20.4 mag (all lunar phases) |
| Filters | ZTF g, ZTF r, ZTF i |
| Areal Survey Rate | 3750 square degrees/hour |
Data Access
At present, access is restricted to project team members (login required):
Science Data System
The following requires access to the ZTF Project Twiki (login required):
