RAPID

Roman Alerts Promptly from Image Differencing

Overview: RAPID (Roman Alerts Promptly from Image Differencing) is a Project Infrastructure Team for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Astro2020 Decadal Survey identified time-domain and multi-messenger science as a high priority. RAPID will enable a wide suite of dynamic-sky science for Roman. The RAPID team has experience providing services to the global time-domain community and will leverage previous work on other projects, particularly the Zwicky Transient Facility. The Principal Investigator for RAPID is Professor Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech). The primary development work for RAPID will be performed at IPAC.

Links

Roman at IPAC

Roman at STScI

Zwicky Transient Facility Homepage

Caltech Astronomy

RAPID will provide four services to the Roman astronomical community: 1) rapid image-differencing of every new Roman image from a reference image; 2) a prompt public alert stream of all transient and variable candidates in the Roman difference images; 3) source match-files recording candidate photometry for every Roman source observed more than once in the same filter; 4) forced photometry to investigate a precise photometric history at any sky location by drilling into all available Roman data. Development work will be performed prior to launch to adapt and tune previous methods to Roman. Core team members of RAPID at IPAC are Ben Rusholme, Schuyler Van Dyk, Roberta Paladini, Joe Masiero, and Jacob Jencson, joined by Caltech Astronomy colleagues Mansi Kasliwal, Lin Yan, and Ashish Mahabal.