The wide-field infrared transient explorer (WINTER)

Understand

The Wide-Field Infrared Transient Explorer (WINTER) is a new infrared time-domain survey instrument which will be deployed on a dedicated 1 meter robotic telescope at Palomar Observatory.

• WINTER will perform a seeing-limited time domain survey of the infrared (IR) sky, with a particular emphasis on identifying r-process material in binary neutron star (BNS) merger remnants detected by LIGO.
• We describe the scientific goals and survey design of the WINTER instrument.
• With a dedicated trigger and the ability to map the full LIGO O4 positional error contour in the IR to a distance of 190 Mpc within four hours, WINTER will be a powerful kilonova discovery engine and tool for multi-messenger astrophysics investigations.