The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS): Deployment and Operations

The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is poised to become the leading survey of exoplanets during the coming decade and springboard UK scientists to leading roles in this important area of research. Based around our WASP heritage and international collaborations, we have designed and procured almost the complete facility. This included building and testing a prototype instrument running on La Palma where various technologies were tested and the risks to the project mitigated. This instrument allowed us to find technologies and strategies where we can virtually eliminate instrument systematic noise - a problem that severely limits the performance of all other wide field surveys and, hence, allows us to unlock the full potential of our survey. The quality of the NGTS data of a single object will be similar in to that obtained from a much larger telescope but will be available for all objects over a much larger field than is traditionally the case. Thus we know we can routinely reach accuracy sufficient to detect ice giants and super-Earth planets around nearby stars which will not only allow us to answer fundamental questions about the composition and origin of planets (eg what is the internal structure of super-Earths?) but also to discover planets that will be prized targets for atmospheric studies with facilities currently being built (JWST) or those being planned (eg E-ELT and a number of space missions). Over the course of a 4 year survey this will allow a factor of 16 improvement over the Kepler results for a comparable planet population. In this endevour, NGTS is partnered with ESO who have contributed a site at Paranal (the best site in the world for our purposes) and will distribute our reduced light curves to the wider astronomical community through the ESO archive.

In this proposal we request STFC support to contribute to the deployment and operation of the facility (and a small capital contribution to be matched by our institutes) over a 4 year period. These duties are divided into five work packages that deal with all aspects of the project. Science exploitation costs we will seek through other opportunities open to us.

NGTS uses fully optimized components specifically designed to reach the highest level of photometric accuracy achievable by any ground based experiment. This is required to reach our scientific aims. To realize this we have worked with two specific UK manufacturers that we have an established relationship with (over the last decade).

At the heart of NGTS are the CCD detectors. These were produced by Andor Technology (Belfast) and are based on e2v deep depleted sensors, but have been packaged and customized inline with our requirements. Andor have now released these state of the art units as one of their normal catalogue products.

We have also again worked with GR Pro. With this company we designed and manufactured the original SuperWASP enclosure, larger versions of which have been used in other astronomical facilities. NGTS required a different design and we have again worked with their design team to produce a new modular product that GR Pro will market. The technology developed for this will also be used in other products.

Our partnership with ESO gives us access to a large and modern Outreach Department from which we will reach an international audience. NGTS will be the premiere transit experiment in the near/medium future and with science drivers that will make some of our most exciting discoveries of great public interest: NGTS exoplanets will be amongst the closest and potentially of rocky composition. Furthermore, NGTS planets will be prized targets for all future atmospheric characterization missions (including JWST). At a national level our demonstrated relationship with STFC Outreach and, of course, our universities will guarantee interest for all audiences.