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| La Silla-QUEST | |
|---|---|
| Name | La Silla-QUEST |
| Location | Cerro La Silla |
| Altitude | 2400 m |
| Established | 2009 |
| Telescope type | Schmidt camera |
| Aperture | 1.0 m (effective) |
| Operator | European Southern Observatory partner institutions |
La Silla-QUEST is a wide-field time-domain survey operated at Cerro La Silla in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The program combined a dedicated wide-field camera with near-nightly cadence to discover transient and variable phenomena, producing alerts used by research groups at institutions such as California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Max Planck Society, and University of Cambridge. Its operations interfaced with projects including Catalina Sky Survey, Pan-STARRS, Zwicky Transient Facility, and Sloan Digital Sky Survey to map optical transients across the southern sky.
The project was initiated through collaborations between teams at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University, Carnegie Institution for Science, and partners from Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris and University of Chile. It used a refurbished Schmidt telescope mount at the European Southern Observatory facility to run an automated survey complementary to northern facilities such as Palomar Observatory and Mount Palomar. Scientific goals targeted searches for near-Earth objects associated with Minor Planet Center follow-up, optical counterparts to gamma-ray bursts cataloged by Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and early detection of Type Ia supernovae for calibration of the distance ladder used in Hubble Space Telescope cosmology programs.
La Silla-QUEST employed a 1.0‑meter-class Schmidt camera coupled to a mosaic CCD array supplied by collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The focal plane design drew on heritage from instruments used at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, and the Anglo-Australian Telescope, enabling a field of view comparable to that of LSST concept studies and components tested at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The camera used broad-band filters informed by systems at Subaru Telescope and Very Large Telescope, and utilized guiding software that integrated with observatory control systems developed by teams including European Southern Observatory engineers and National Optical Astronomy Observatory staff.
Operations were scheduled to maximize overlap with follow-up assets at Gemini Observatory, Magellan telescopes, and Very Large Telescope, and coordinated via networks such as the Transient Name Server and International Astronomical Union circulars. Nightly cadence strategies were tuned to detect fast transients observed by Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and to monitor variable stars cataloged by Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment and All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Target selection algorithms implemented machine learning models inspired by work at Google DeepMind and statistical frameworks used by Harvard & Smithsonian teams. The survey also scheduled fields to aid solar system programs associated with Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Minor Planet Center risk assessment efforts.
The program contributed to the discovery and early characterization of multiple Type II supernovae, fast-evolving transients compared with events reported by Pan-STARRS1, and optical counterparts to candidates from Advanced LIGO and Virgo (gravitational-wave observatory). Results were used by research groups at University of Oxford, University of Tokyo, University of Sydney, and Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics to study progenitor systems and explosion physics. Survey detections fed into follow-up spectroscopic campaigns at Keck Observatory, ESO Very Large Telescope, and Southern African Large Telescope, supporting analyses in journals that included authors from Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Toronto. The dataset also aided studies of variable active galactic nuclei associated with catalogs from Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, and Fermi.
Image reduction pipelines were developed drawing on algorithms and software libraries used by Astropy Project, IRAF, and data processing approaches from Sloan Digital Sky Survey teams. Calibration used standards tied to photometric systems established by Landolt photometric standards and cross-matched to catalogs from Gaia, 2MASS, WISE, and APASS. Data products were ingested into databases interoperable with services run by Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg, NASA/IPAC, and the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, enabling researchers affiliated with University of Arizona, University College London, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile to query light curves and transient alerts. Archival strategies followed best practices advocated by National Science Foundation data policies and mirrored copies at facilities such as National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and CSIRO.
La Silla-QUEST was supported by funding and in-kind contributions from agencies including the National Science Foundation, European Southern Observatory, CONICYT, and private foundations associated with Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and institutional grants from Yale University and University of Pennsylvania. Scientific collaboration encompassed teams from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Space Telescope Science Institute, and regional partners such as Universidad de Chile and Universidad Católica del Norte. The program interfaced with global efforts including LSST Corporation, Zwicky Transient Facility partnership, and community data exchanges coordinated through International Astronomical Union working groups.
Category:Astronomical surveys Category:Observatories in Chile