From March 5–8, 2025, CIERA hosted the inaugural La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4) Team Meeting, bringing together over 50 researchers from across the globe to advance the new time-domain survey.
LS4 builds on the La Silla Schmidt telescope’s legacy, using upgraded technology to monitor the night sky for transient and variable phenomena. The LS4 survey spots stellar explosions, variable stars, and other fast-changing events with exceptional sensitivity in red-optical and near-infrared light. An upgraded camera gives LS4 a wide 20-square-degree view. This setup lets LS4 track brightness changes from minutes to years.
First-light with the LS4 camera is expected about a month from now, and survey operations are planned to begin in the middle of 2025.
La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey, Atacama Desert, Chile
Image Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)
Prof. Adam Miller (Northwestern University), LS4 Director and CIERA’s representative on the LS4 Executive Council, led the meeting’s organization. “Many different people have been working for several years to make LS4 a reality. The team meeting allowed us to bring the distributed groups together in order to connect the different components that will be required to run the survey. Gathering together allowed the collaboration to refine our survey strategy to ensure that we make many exciting discoveries over the next five years. We all could not be more excited to launch this new discovery machine,” said Professor Miller.
Joining in organizing the meeting and guiding discussions and collaboration were Prof. Iair Arcavi (Tel Aviv University), Dr. Samantha Oates (Lancaster University), and Dr. Steve Schulze (Northwestern University). The meeting at CIERA featured technical updates, discussions on survey strategy, and the development of collaborative efforts for follow-up observations. Attendees engaged in sessions on coordination, scientific priorities, and proposal development, with updates from LS4’s Science Working Groups.
As LS4 moves forward, the insights gained from this first team meeting will play a pivotal role in shaping the survey’s observational strategy and scientific impact. CIERA is proud to support this research and looks forward to the discoveries LS4 will bring to the astronomical community.
Learn more La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey