Calendar event

During most of the last century, the study of explosive transient
sources and variable stars was a major focus of astronomy. The study
of RR Lyrae, Cepheid variables and supernovae revolutionized our
understanding of the physical scal and composition of the Universe.
The field is once again undergoing a renaissance due to wide field
optical surveys. The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) was designed
to explicitly to chart the transient sky. With its innovative
two-telescope architecture it achieves both high cadence and large
areal rate of coverage. PTF achieved first light at the beginning
of the year and entered routine operation in June. PTF is now
finding an extragalactic transient every 20 minutes and a Galactic
(strong) variable every 10 minutes. Our first two major accomplishments
are the discovery of a new class of ultra-bright supernovae (dubbed
spasmanova) and UV spectroscopy of local Ia supernovae (critical to
the use of Ia for cosmography)