The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS): Operations 2022-2025

In this proposal we request continued STFC support for operations of the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) project, covering the period April 2022 to March 2025.

NGTS employs an array of twelve purpose-built telescopes at the ESO Paranal Observatory, Chile, that are optimised for exoplanet transit observations. For stars of 9th magnitude and fainter we match the space-based photometric precision of the TESS mission (as good as 100ppm in 30min at 9th magnitude with 12 telescopes), which is unprecedented for a ground-based instrument.

Our primary goal is to find and characterise exoplanets that are well suited to detailed studies with large facilities, such as ESO's VLT and ELT telescopes.

NGTS is led from the UK, with a consortium that includes members from eight UK institutions together with international partners in Geneva, Berlin and Chile. Capital costs were funded by the consortium institutes, and operations are supported by STFC together with in-kind contributions from ESO. The facility has been operational since 2016, and NGTS data have been used in more than fifty refereed publications across a wide range of science topics.

Our science programme for the period 2022-2025 will focus on two main topics: 1) the discovery and characterisation of long-period exoplanets identified as candidates from single-transit events in TESS data; and 2) probing planetary evolution by searching for young exoplanets in open clusters where the fields are too crowded for TESS. NGTS data will also support a wide range of non-exoplanet science, including the evolution of stellar rotation, stellar flares on ultracool dwarfs, coronal heating by nano-flares, transits and eclipses of white dwarfs, and the variability of cataclysmic variables and young stellar objects.

These science goals will be pursued by members the NGTS consortium, which already includes 47 UK astronomers from 8 institutes, and with new members continuing to join via an open call for UK collaborators. The wider astronomical community also has the opportunity to exploit NGTS data, which is made publicly available through the ESO archive.

We request funding for three main tasks that are required for NGTS operations. In addition to project management (WP1), these are: the daily operation of the facility, including scheduling of observations (WP2); the maintenance of the telescopes and buildings in Chile (WP3); and the processing and curation of the data (WP4). The main cost for the project is the PDRA needed for WPs 2-4.

We also request investigator time to support WPs 1-4, and the travel and consumables needed to operate the remote facility. Our project supports a broad UK community including the training of a new generation of scientists in preparation for PLATO and ARIEL.