The Diverse Science Return from a Wide-Area Survey of the Galactic Plane

Understand

The overwhelming majority of objects visible to LSST lie within the Galactic Plane.

• Though many previous surveys have avoided this region for fear of stellar crowding, LSST's spatial resolution combined with its state-of-the-art Difference Image Analysis mean that it can conduct a high cadence survey of most of the Galaxy for the first time.
• Here we outline the many areas of science that would greatly benefit from an LSST survey that included the Galactic Plane, Magellanic Clouds and Bulge at a cadence of 2-3 d.
• Particular highlights include measuring the mass spectrum of black holes, and mapping the population of exoplanets in the Galaxy in relation to variations in star forming environments.