First Data Release by the Next Generation Transit Survey

Published: 21 Nov 2018
The Next Generation Transit Survey

The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based exoplanet survey designed to detect Neptune and super-Earth sized planets orbiting around bright stars, using the transit method. The NGTS facility consists of 12 fully-robotic 20-cm f/2.8 telescopes located on ESO ground in Paranal. Each telescope has a 2.8 x 2.8 deg2 field of view and is equipped with a custom filter with a bandpass of 520-890 nm, which increases sensitivity to late-K and early-M stars.

The first data release from NGTS includes 24 separate fields that have been completed during the first year of observations (April 2016 to April 2017). This release contains both a source catalogue containing sources down to magnitudes of 16, and a light curve catalogue obtained using astrometry and aperture-based photometry. In total, this release contains more than two hundred thousand sources, collecting almost 32 billion data points at a 12-second cadence. The volume of this entire  data release is 1.7 Tb.

Data files and sky coverage can be obtained using the Archive Science Portal. More information is available in the accompanying data release document.