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AAVSO "Superstar Astronomers" with Dr. Krzysztof Stanek

All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae: Big Science with Small Telescopes

Until the present day, only human eyes monitored the entire night sky. There was no optical survey that frequently searched the entire celestial sphere, seeking out the transient, variable, and sometimes violent events that mark the evolution and transformation of our Universe. We changed that with our "All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae’’ (ASAS-SN), which automatically surveys the entire visible sky every night, for the first time in human history.

ASAS-SN is discovering large numbers of bright supernovae, quasar flares, tidal disruption events, Galactic novae, and variable stars that in turn trigger additional observations across the electromagnetic spectrum and beyond. Because ASAS-SN transients are bright, they are easily studied in detail and frequently become the best-studied examples of any transient class and the templates for understanding fainter, less easily studied examples.

Dr. Stanek will discuss some of the most interesting recent ASAS-SN discoveries, as well as the various ways in which we make our data public. The scientific value and public utility of ASAS-SN data are growing rapidly, and he will discuss the plans for that to continue in the future.

Dr. Stanek leads the ASAS-SN project, in collaboration with other astronomers. He is an astronomy professor and University Distinguished Scholar at Ohio State University. His expertise lies in supernovae & gamma ray bursts, galactic structure, and time-domain astrophysics. Dr. Stanek was one of the recipients of the AAS Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize in 2020 for the efforts on ASAS-SN.

Jun 25, 2022 06:00 PM in Universal Time UTC