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A One-Meter Infrared Surveyor Began Sending Its Own Alerts

WINTER’s open pipeline turned six InGaAs detectors into reduced images, subtractions and Avro transient alerts.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-09-13-027
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Summary

WINTER’s open pipeline turned six InGaAs detectors into reduced images, subtractions and Avro transient alerts.

The Wide-field Infrared Transient Explorer uses six lower-cost InGaAs detectors on a robotic one-meter telescope at Palomar. Its open winterdrp pipeline reduces dithered images, performs subtraction and emits Avro transient alerts for vetting and follow-up. During 2024 observations, the six detectors reached median five-sigma J-band depths of 18.1–18.8 AB magnitude in 960-second integrations, about 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy and 0.09–0.18 magnitude photometric accuracy. Early science included a stellar merger in M31 and follow-up of neutrinos, gravitational waves and high-energy transients. Performance varies by detector and observing conditions.

Why it matters

WINTER’s open pipeline turned six InGaAs detectors into reduced images, subtractions and Avro transient alerts.

Limits and context

No additional limitation was separately recorded.

Key claims

  1. WINTER’s open pipeline turned six InGaAs detectors into reduced images, subtractions and Avro transient alerts.

    Evidence: source-2026-09-13-016

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2609.10675arXiv · primary research

Corrections

No corrections have been recorded for this story.