AstroNote 2019-148

We report the start of the Young Supernova Experiment, a new collaboration between DARK (U Copenhagen; PIs Hjorth and Ramirez-Ruiz), UC Santa Cruz (PIs Foley and Ramirez-Ruiz), U Illinois (PIs French and Narayan) and PIs Drout (U Toronto) and Margutti (Northwestern).  This survey will use the 7-square degree field of view of the Pan-STARRS1 and Pan-STARRS2 telescopes (Chambers et al., 2016, arXiv:1612.05560) to identify supernovae and other transients with peak magnitudes as faint as ~21.5.

YSE observes with a three-day cadence in combinations of g, r, and i bands during dark/grey time, and combinations of r, i, and z bands during bright time.  We observe in two bands per epoch with exposure times of 27s per band and a limiting magnitude during dark time of approximately 21.5.  The survey began on November 24th with an initial survey area of approximately 80 degrees per night for a total survey area of 250 square degrees every three nights, and this area will increase to approximately 1500 square degrees in the coming weeks.

Data are processed with the IPP difference imaging pipeline at the IfA in Hawaii (Magnier et al., 2016, arXiv:1612.05240) and the Transient Science Server at Queen's University Belfast, the same pipeline used for the Pan-STARRS Survey for Transients (Huber et al., 2015, ATel #7153).  New transient discoveries will be publicly released via the Transient Name Server and will be cross-matched with previously discovered transients.  Here, we report the following initial discoveries: PS19gza (2019wbv), PS19gzb (2019wbw), PS19gzc (2019wby), PS19gzg (2019wbz), PS19gzj (2019wcb) and PS19gzk (2019wcc).