DRAFT
2025-03-10 17:49:14
Type: Announcement-Campaign/Survey
The DECam DESI Transient Survey (2DTS)
Authors: Xander J. Hall (CMU), Lei Hu (CMU), Antonella Palmese (CMU), Lifan Wang (TAMU), Brendan O’Connor (CMU), Tomás Cabrera (CMU), Igor Andreoni (UNC), Anton Koekemoer (STScI), Michael Coughlin (UMN), Alex G. Kim (LBNL), Segev BenZvi (UR), on behalf of the 2DTS team
Source Group: DESIRT
Abstract:
We announce the 2DTS: the DECam DESI Transient Survey, a new survey combining the efforts of DESIRT (DECam Search for Intermediate Redshift Transients) and the DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) Transient Survey. This combined survey started in February 2025 and will last until, at least, July 2026.

2DTS aims to identify and classify transients discovered in active DESI fields, either by photometric observations with DECam or spectroscopic classification with DESI. This survey leverages both a system of spectroscopic follow-up through DESI and photometric follow-up through DECam.

This program is uncovering a population of relatively faint transients with peak magnitudes beyond 20.5 AB mag, and observing them with a cadence of roughly 3 days. These transients are discoverable by only a few wide-field instruments at present, and we hope to start to uncover a population of objects that will also be observable by Rubin LSST.

Our DECam program uses the SFFT difference imaging pipeline (Hu et al. 2022) to identify potential transients. Observations of ~100 sq. deg of sky will be observed. All sources discovered by DECam are being posted promptly to TNS by DESIRTbot. As a part of 2DTS, all PSN transients reported to TNS, are also being queued as ToOs for DESI, pending available fibers. 

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