Title:  All That Glitters: Synoptic Time-Domain Science with Palomar/QUEST
Speaker:  Dr. Richard Scalzo
          Yale University

Date/Time/Place:  Thursday, April 2, 2009, 11:00 AM -- Small Seminar Room, BNL Physics 510


Abstract:
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   The QUasar Equatorial Survey Team (QUEST) project is an ongoing synoptic sky survey 
which has been in progress since 1998.  The recently concluded Palomar/QUEST phase 
covered a 20,000 square degree area 70+ times, each to a depth of R ~ 20 in a red 
RG-610 filter.  The data were shared by several groups, including the NEAT/JPL 
search for asteroids and minor planets, the Nearby Supernova Factory search for 
type Ia supernovae, the QUEST quasar search, and most recently the DeepSky 
project at LBNL which will co-add all Palomar/QUEST images to reach a depth of 
R > 23.  The wide-area QUEST camera is currently being relocated to ESO's La
Silla Observatory in Chile, where it will continue imaging the southern sky in
the SDSS g and r bands.

   QUEST's repeated coverage of nearly half the sky accesses a new region of parameter space 
in time-domain astronomy, anticipating the time coverage available via the Large Synoptic 
Survey Telescope (LSST), and provides a competitive platform for time-domain survey science until
LSST sees first light.  I will briefly discuss the survey instrumentation and data reduction, 
present an overview of ongoing QUEST science initiatives, and then describe two of these in 
greater detail:  (1) ensemble studies of photometric variability in quasars, probing 
accretion onto supermassive black holes, and (2) the discovery of several peculiar thermonuclear
supernovae, with implications for the progenitor systems of SNe Ia and hence for systematic 
effects in the study of dark energy.

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