ZTF Alert Archive
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Summary & Access
Rather than only reporting events likely to be new explosive extragalactic transients, ZTF streams all sources that are above a specified detection threshold in the difference image, whether they are likely due to transients, variable stars, or moving objects. This approach allows the science user the greatest flexibility in identifying candidates of interest for their individual science program.
The ZTF Alert Distribution System (ZADS) platform is key to enabling real-time, time-domain science, including the discovery of young supernovae, the detection of near-Earth asteroids, the identification of stellar variables, and the search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources. ZADS is the near-real-time streaming platform which obtains alerts from the image differencing object detection and alert generation process and delivers them to downstream brokers and science users. The goal of ZADS is to support the availability of science quality alerts from ZTF within 20 minutes of observation.
ZADS streams over 1 million alerts per night, reliably supporting the high detection alert rate of ZTF. The alerts are transferred from the IPAC's system and delivered to the alert archive housed at University of Washington (public facing cloud system), and to downstream community event brokers.
The ZADS is described in detail in The Zwicky Transient Facility Alert Distribution System (Patterson et al. 2019).
To access the alert archive at the UW, click on the button below. Community brokers that ingest the ZTF alert stream are listed on the right.
Community Alert Brokers
The alert stream archive provides only nightly summaries of the ZTF alerts. There is currently a suite of public event brokers that provide real time access to the ZTF alert stream.
