Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS)

In order to search for optical transients (OTs) with timescales of minutes to years, the CRTS analyses data from the Catalina Sky Survey which repeatedly covers 26000 of square degrees on the sky. The CRTS provides a public stream of transients that are bright enough to be followed up using small telescopes.

Since the beginning of the survey, all CRTS transients have been made available to astronomers around the world in real time using HTML tables, RSS feeds, and VOEvents. As part of our public outreach program, the detections are now also available in Keyhole Markup Language through Google Sky. The initial discoveries include over 350 unique OTs rising more than 2mag from past measurements.