RAPID

Roman Alerts Promptly from Image Differencing

RAPID is a Project Infrastructure Team for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Astro2020 Decadal Survey identified time-domain and multi-messenger science as a high priority. RAPID will enable a wide suite of dynamic-sky science for Roman. The RAPID team has experience providing services to the global time-domain community and will leverage previous work on other projects, particularly the Zwicky Transient Facility. The Principal Investigator for RAPID is Professor Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech). The primary development work for RAPID will be performed at Caltech IPAC.

Roman RAPID
Enabling Time Domain for Roman

RAPID will enable prompt transient discovery in the Roman Core Community and General Astrophysics Surveys

Roman will discover in the infrared a ever-growing menagerie of transient and variable events with a range of luminosities and timescales. Roman will be an efficient discovery machine for time domain astronomy. RAPID will generate and disseminate low-latency alerts from image differencing for every Roman imaging observation.

transient discovery with Roman
Our Goals

RAPID will provide four services to the Roman astronomical community

  • Rapid image-differencing of every new Roman image from a reference image
  • A prompt public alert stream of all transient and variable candidates in the Roman difference images
  • Source match-files recording candidate photometry for every Roman source observed more than once in the same filter
  • Forced photometry to investigate a precise photometric history at any sky location by drilling into all available Roman data
Our Plan

Low latency is RAPID's highest priority

  • Obtain calibrated Roman WFI Level-2 image data from the Science Operations Center at STScI in less than 48 hours
  • Execute image differencing and prompt public alert broadcasting within 1 hour
    • Includes initial source classification via machine learning
  • Offer forced photometry on difference images, append and release light curve history within 24 hours
  • Archive public alerts via the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at STScI
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