VAST: An ASKAP Survey for Variables and Slow Transients

Understand

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) will give us an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the transient sky at radio wavelengths.

• In this paper we present VAST, an ASKAP survey for Variables and Slow Transients.
• VAST will exploit the wide-field survey capabilities of ASKAP to enable the discovery and investigation of variable and transient phenomena from the local to the cosmological, including flare stars, intermittent pulsars, X-ray binaries, magnetars, extreme scattering events, interstellar scintillation, radio supernovae and orphan afterglows of gamma ray bursts.
• In addition, it will allow us to probe unexplored regions of parameter space where new classes of transient sources may be detected.