A Minute-Cadence Deep Bulge Survey: First Data Release of DREAMS
Hongjing Yang, Weicheng Zang, Francisco Valdes, Qiyue Qian, Yuchen Tang, Zhixing Li, Yuxin Shang, Shude Mao, Yaosong Yu, Guillermo Damke, Alfredo Zenteno, Steve Heathcote, Konstantina Boutsia, Andong Xu, Hao Ma, Jiyuan Zhang, Hongyu Li, Xikai Shan, Przemek Mróz, Xiurui Zhao, Andrew Gould, Jennifer C. Yee, Chung-Uk Lee, Matthew Penny, Sean Terry, Patrick Tamburo, Tim Cunningham, Quanzhi Ye, Eric W. Peng, Rachel Street, Katarzyna Kruszyńska, Etienne Bachelet, Yiannis Tsapras, Markus Hundertmark
astro-ph.SR, astro-ph.EP, astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM
Submitted: 2026-07-23
Updated: 2026-08-18
Comments: Accepted for publication in ApJS. Data release portal: https://astro.westlake.edu.cn/dreams/
Project page: https://astro.westlake.edu.cn/dreams
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
The gist: The DECam Rogue Earths and Mars Survey (DREAMS), a NOIRLab survey program, has been conducting a three-year survey covering a 5 deg squared area in the Galactic bulge (roughly spanning-1.2 +2.1
Terminology
Abstract
The DECam Rogue Earths and Mars Survey (DREAMS), a NOIRLab survey program, has been conducting a three-year survey covering a 5 deg squared area in the Galactic bulge (roughly spanning-1.2 +2.1 and-2.8 b-0.6) since 2025 June. Its primary science goal is to detect low-mass free-floating planets through microlensing, while its minute-level cadence (20-40, hr-1 in z band and 4-8, hr-1 in r band) also enables the detection and characterization of rapid phenomena on timescales of minutes to hours such as stellar flares and pulsating stars. The survey reaches a single-exposure depth of z AB about 22 mag, about two magnitudes deeper than previous bulge time-domain surveys. We present the data reduction and calibration of the DREAMS observations obtained in 2025 and introduce the first DREAMS data release (DR1). DR1 includes 1,856 z-band observations and 325 r-band observations for 59,372,789 stars. The DREAMS DR1 catalog contains about twice as many stars as previous catalog covering the same 5 deg squared area. We present DREAMS light curves for a known blue large-amplitude pulsator (BLAP) and a known low-amplitude transiting system to demonstrate the survey's capabilities. We also perform a pilot search for short-duration variables over about 0.4% of the DR1 sample, identifying one new short microlensing event, two stellar flares, and 24 new short variables. This suggests that DREAMS DR1 may contain hundreds of stellar flares and thousands of previously unknown short variables.
Sources
- ET White Paper: To Find the First Earth 2.0
- The Dark Energy Camera (DECam)
- The Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) Alert Algorithm and Alert System
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