Astroinformatics Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 325, 2016 M. Brescia, S.G. Djorgovski, E. Feigelson, G. Longo & S. Cavuoti, eds. c  International Astronomical Union 2017 doi:10.1017/S1743921316012667 Pan-STARRS1 as pilot-survey for panoptic time-domain science Nina Hernitschek 1 , Hans-Walter Rix 1 , Branimir Sesar 1 and Edward F. Schlafly 2 1 Max-Planck-Institut f¨ ur Astronomie, K¨ onigstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany email: hernitschek@mpia.de 2 UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-5800 Abstract. For examining possibilities and challenges in doing science with multi-band and non- simultaneous data from upcoming surveys like LSST, the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) 3π can be used as a pilot survey. This is especially important to explore the possibilities in detection and classi- fication of variable sources within the first years of LSST’s 10-year baseline. We had explored the capabilities of PS1 3π for carrying out time-domain science in a variety of applications. We had used structure function fitting as well as period fitting, to search for and classify high-latitude as well as low-latitude variable sources, in particular RR Lyrae, Cepheids and QSOs. Keywords. methods: data analysis, methods: statistical, catalogs, surveys, (stars: variables:) Cepheids, stars: variables: other, (galaxies:) quasars: general 1. Introduction This contribution deals with the time-domain properties of PS1 3π and why and how PS1 3π can serve as a pilot survey for the upcoming LSST. In the case described here, a pilot survey is an existing survey that is fully operationally and scientifically used, but can also be used to gather information for upcoming surveys. 2. Comparison of Pan-STARRS1 3π and LSST Answering questions related to the important scientific problems of the next decade (such as studying the evolution of our Milky Way and of galaxies in general, discovering the nature of Dark Energy and Dark Matter, and opening up the time domain to discover rare transient and variable objects down to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence) relies strongly on deep, wide-field time-domain imaging of the sky in optical bands. Surveys like Pan-STARRS1 are already preparing for the challenges of the upcoming generation of synoptic sky surveys.† Pan-STARRS consists of two telescopes, of which the first one, PS1, was used for the Pan-STARRS1 survey. Most of the observing time is dedicated to two surveys: The 3π survey, observing the entire sky north of declination -30 ◦ , and the medium-deep survey, a deeper, many-epoch survey of 10 fields, each 7 deg 2 in size (Chambers 2011). At the end of the 3π survey, there are in total ∼12 observations in each of the 5 filters available for each part of the observable sky. The PS1 Science Consortium defined 12 key projects, many related to galaxies and large-scale Milky Way structures. The LSST is one out of the upcoming generation of synoptic sky surveys that will † Here, this word is adopted from the LSST Science Book, Version 2.0, who use it to refer to “looking at all aspects of something”, derived from the Greek word “Synopsis”. 118 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921316012667 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 23.20.186.248, on 07 Dec 2021 at 17:02:12, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at