Browsing by Author "Graham, Melissa L."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Deep drilling in the time domain with DECam: survey characterization
    (2023) Graham, Melissa L.; Knop, Robert A.; Kennedy, Thomas D.; Nugent, Peter E.; Bellm, Eric; Catelan, Márcio; Patel, Avi; Smotherman, Hayden; Soraisam, Monika; Stetzler, Steven; Aldoroty, Lauren N.; Awbrey, Autumn; Baeza-Villagra, Karina; Bernardinelli, Pedro H.; Federica Bianco, Federica; Brout, Dillon; Clarke, Riley; Clarkson, William I.; Collett, Thomas; Davenport, James R.; Fu, Shenming; Gizis, John E.; Heinze, Ari; Hu, Lei; Jha, Saurabh W.; Jurić, Mario; Kalmbach, J. Bryce; Kim, Alex; Lee, Chien-Hsiu; Lidman, Chris; Magee, Mark; Martínez-Vázquez, Clara E.; Matheson, Thomas; Narayan, Gautham; Palmese, Antonella; Phillips, Christopher A.; Rabus, Markus; Rest, Armin; Rodríguez-Segovia, Nicolás; Street, Rachel; Vivas, A. Katherina; Wang, Lifan; Wolf, Nicholas; Yang, Jiawen
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    High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) with DECam: Project Overview and First Data Release
    (2024) Zhuang, Ming-Yang; Yang, Qian; Shen, Yue; Adamow, Monika; Friedel, Douglas N.; Gruendl, R. A.; Stone, Zachary; Li, Junyao; Liu, Xin; Martini, Paul; Abbott, Timothy M. C.; Anderson, Scott F.; Assef, Roberto J.; Bauer, Franz E.; Bielby, Richard; Brandt, W. N.; Burke, Colin J.; Casares, Jorge; Chen, Yu-Ching; De Rosa, Gisella; Drlica-Wagner, Alex; Dwelly, Tom; Eltvedt, Alice; Alvarez, Gloria Fonseca; Fu, Jianyang; Fuentes, Cesar; Graham, Melissa L.; Grier, Catherine J.; Golovich, Nathan; Hall, Patrick B.; Hartigan, Patrick; Horne, Keith; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Krumpe, Mirko; Li, Jennifer I.; Lidman, Chris; Malik, Umang; Mangian, Amelia; Merloni, Andrea; Ricci, Claudio; Salvato, Mara; Sharp, Rob; Trilling, David E.; Tucker, Brad E.; Wen, Di; Wideman, Zachary; Xue, Yongquan; Yu, Zhefu; Zucker, Catherine
    High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) is a long-term observing program that photometrically monitors several well-studied extragalactic legacy fields with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) imager on the CTIO 4 m Blanco telescope. Since 2019 February, HELM has been monitoring regions within COSMOS, XMM-LSS, CDF-S, S-CVZ, ELAIS-S1, and SDSS Stripe 82 with few-day cadences in the (u)gri(z) bands, over a collective sky area of similar to 38 deg2. The main science goal of HELM is to provide high-quality optical light curves for a large sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and to build decades-long time baselines when combining past and future optical light curves in these legacy fields. These optical images and light curves will facilitate the measurements of AGN reverberation mapping lags, as well as studies of AGN variability and its dependencies on accretion properties. In addition, the time-resolved and coadded DECam photometry will enable a broad range of science applications from galaxy evolution to time-domain science. We describe the design and implementation of the program and present the first data release that includes source catalogs and the first similar to 3.5 yr of light curves during 2019A-2022A.
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    Optimization of the Observing Cadence for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: A Pioneering Process of Community-focused Experimental Design
    (2022) Bianco, Federica B.; Ivezić, Željko; Jones, R. Lynne; Graham, Melissa L.; Marshall, Phil; Saha, Abhijit; Strauss, Michael A.; Yoachim, Peter; Ribeiro, Tiago; Anguita, Timo; Bauer, A. E.; Bauer, Franz E.; Bellm, Eric C.; Blum, Robert D.; Brandt, William N.; Brough, Sarah; Catelan, Márcio; Clarkson, William I.; Connolly, Andrew J.; Gawiser, Eric; Gizis, John E.; Hložek, Renée; Kaviraj, Sugata; Liu, Charles T.; Lochner, Michelle; Mahabal, Ashish A.; Mandelbaum, Rachel; McGehee, Peregrine; Neilsen, Eric H., Jr.; Olsen, Knut A. G.; Peiris, Hiranya V.; Rhodes, Jason; Richards, Gordon T.; Ridgway, Stephen; Schwamb, Megan E.; Scolnic, Dan; Shemmer, Ohad; Slater, Colin T.; Slosar, Anže; Smartt, Stephen J.; Strader, Jay; Street, Rachel; Trilling, David E.; Verma, Aprajita; Vivas, A. K.; Wechsler, Risa H.; Willman, Beth
    Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a ground-based astronomical facility under construction, a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, designed to conduct a multipurpose 10 yr optical survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Significant flexibility in survey strategy remains within the constraints imposed by the core science goals of probing dark energy and dark matter, cataloging the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. The survey's massive data throughput will be transformational for many other astrophysics domains and Rubin's data access policy sets the stage for a huge community of potential users. To ensure that the survey science potential is maximized while serving as broad a community as possible, Rubin Observatory has involved the scientific community at large in the process of setting and refining the details of the observing strategy. The motivation, history, and decision-making process of this strategy optimization are detailed in this paper, giving context to the science-driven proposals and recommendations for the survey strategy included in this Focus Issue....