The New Milky Way
a wide-field survey of bright optical transients
| NMW survey overview | Access image archive | Authors | Gallery | NMW-TexasTech | Links to other tools |
The NMW survey
The New Milky Way (NMW) survey aims to detect bright optical transients (Galactic novae in particular) using automated wide-field camera systems built with low-cost mass-produced components.
The survey operates two cameras at the Astroverty astrofarm near Nizhnii Arkhyz in the Northern Caucasus mountains (Karachay-Cherkessia, Russia; about 2000 m above sea level, not far from the 6-m BTA telescope). The original Camera-1 (SBIG ST-8300M CCD) images the whole Milky Way area visible from the site in a single night, while the wider-field Camera-2 (SBIG STL-11000M CCD) covers the entire visible sky in about two nights. The second camera was added after the survey moved to a roll-off-roof pavilion in 2020. Since then the observations are conducted on every clear night, with a team of volunteers running the cameras remotely.
The transient detection pipeline combines three open source code repositories: astrocam-go, the image uploader running on the camera control computer; VaST, the software performing the image analysis; and unmw, the server-side scripts that wrap VaST and present the detected transient candidates for human inspection.
The survey results include the discovery of six novae: Nova Sagittarii 2012 (V5589 Sgr), Nova Cassiopeiae 2020 (V1391 Cas), Nova Persei 2020 (V1112 Per) (co-discovery), Nova Vulpeculae 2024 (V615 Vul), Nova Sagittarii 2025 No. 3 (V7993 Sgr) and Nova Serpentis 2025 (V691 Ser), as well as two X-ray emitting cataclysmic variables 1RXS J063214.8+25362 and XMMSL1 J014956.7+533504, the outbursting AM CVn-type binary TCP J07222683+6220548 (Tarasenkov et al. 2025, RAA, 25, 075017) and a number of dwarf novae, flare stars and variable stars of other types. The rapid detection of Nova Sagittarii 2012 No. 1 enabled us to conduct its X-ray and UV observations with Swift 22 hours after discovery (~31 hour after the outburst onset).
The images obtained during the transient search survey are available online (please use the image archive access form). The survey parameters are summarized in the table below. A more detailed (but now somewhat outdated) description of the survey may be found in this arXiv e-print.
| Camera-1 | Camera-2 | |
| Optics: | Canon 135 mm f/2.0 telephoto lens | |
| CCD camera: | SBIG ST-8300M | SBIG STL-11000M |
| CCD chip: | KAF-8300 (blue-sensitive) | KAI-11002 (35 mm format) |
| Image size: | 3352 x 2532 pix | 4008 x 2672 pix |
| Pixel scale: | 8.4"/pix | 13.8"/pix |
| Field of view: | 7.8 x 5.9 deg. | 15.4 x 10.2 deg. |
| Optical filter: | none | |
| Equatorial mount: | HEQ-5 Pro | |
| Exposure time: | 20 sec | |
| Images per field: | 3 per visit (dithering) | |
| Stars per frame: | up to ~20000 | up to ~100000 |
| Sky coverage: | visible Milky Way area each night | entire visible sky in ~2 nights |
| Accuracy at V~11: | 0.1m (absolute), 0.05m (internal) | |
| Transient detection limit: | V = 13.4-13.8 | V = 13.5-14.3 |
| Site: | Astroverty astrofarm, Karachay-Cherkessia, Russia | |
The transient detection efficiency of the two NMW cameras as a function of transient magnitude, based on the insert-and-recovery simulations:
In its early years (2011-2019) the NMW survey was not run continuously: it consisted of individual observing sessions of varying length separated by large gaps. Since the move to the roll-off-roof pavilion in 2020 we have transitioned to every-clear-night operations. The current time distribution of the observations accessible through the archive interface is presented in the plot:
The sky coverage plot:
ST-8300 Legacy Image Archive
Note: the archive currently includes only images obtained with the first NMW camera (ST-8300M) and does not include the latest images. We are working on making the complete image dataset accessible.You may use this form to access the NMW images of a given sky region. It may take a minute or two to extract the requested images. Please click just once and wait for results.
You may also access the full images directly. (It takes a while to load the image list.)
If you use data from the NMW archive in a scientific publication, please cite the e-print describing the survey.
Original authors of the project
The NMW survey was created by Stanislav Korotkiy (Astroverty, Ka-Dar) and Kirill Sokolovsky (currently at Texas Tech University). The project now relies on a team of volunteers whose efforts enable the every-clear-night observations and rapid analysis of the collected data.
Gallery
The NMW Camera-1 (ST-8300M) in 2020.
The NMW Camera-1 (ST-8300M) in 2020.
The NMW Camera-2 (STL-11000M) in the roll-off-roof pavilion, with the Caucasus mountains in the background.
The NMW camera in 2013. The funny-looking object in Orion is a ghost image from the Moon.
A star field in Sagittarius imaged with the NMW Camera-1 (full frame).
An overall view of the observing site (2013).
The NMW observing site marked on Google Maps.
You may also see the NMW camera and the output of the transient-detection software in this YouTube video (in Russian).
NMW-TexasTech: the sister project
NMW-TexasTech is the sister project of the NMW survey: a new transient search sharing the same goals, observing strategy and software, running on modern hardware on the other side of the globe. Two identical cameras (Rokinon 135 mm f/2.0 telephoto lens + QHY600M CMOS camera on a ZWO AM5 mount) are housed in two Avalon Merlino remotely-controlled clamshell domes at the Preston Gott Skyview Observatory some 15 km north of Lubbock, Texas, USA (about 1000 m above sea level). Each camera covers the entire sky visible from the site every clear night, with low Galactic latitude fields imaged at high priority. The imaging is automated with N.I.N.A. and its Target Scheduler plugin, while the transient detection relies on the same VaST-based pipeline as the original NMW. Regular every-clear-night operations started in April 2026. NMW-TexasTech is run by Kirill Sokolovsky, Katie Barnhart, Darien Perla, Vallia Antoniou and Elias Aydi (Texas Tech University).
While NMW-TexasTech has yet to catch its first nova, the initial months of operations have already yielded six transients reported to the CBAT Transient Objects Confirmation Page: four WZ Sge-type dwarf novae, an outbursting AM CVn-type binary (ATel #17791) and a microlensing event (TCP J19324367-2239307); three UV Cet-type flare stars accepted to VSX (with some 20 more pending), and the detection of a bright optical flare of the blazar TXS 1420+326 (ATel #17782).
| Optics: | 2 x Rokinon 135 mm f/2.0 telephoto lens |
| Camera: | 2 x QHY600M (61 Mpx IMX455 CMOS) |
| Mount: | 2 x ZWO AM5 |
| Image size: | 9576 x 6388 pix |
| Pixel scale: | 5.9"/pix |
| Field of view: | 15.7 x 10.4 deg. |
| Optical filter: | none |
| Exposure time: | 20 sec |
| Sky coverage: | entire visible sky each clear night (per camera) |
| Transient detection limit: | V = 14.4-15.2 |
| Site: | Preston Gott Skyview Observatory, TX, USA |
The two NMW-TexasTech cameras in their Avalon Merlino clamshell domes at the Preston Gott Skyview Observatory.
One of the NMW-TexasTech cameras: Rokinon 135 mm f/2.0 lens + QHY600M CMOS camera on a ZWO AM5 mount.
An NMW-TexasTech camera.
The transient detection efficiency of the NMW-TexasTech cameras, based on the insert-and-recovery simulations.
External links
- The VaST software for variable star search. The NMW processing pipeline is based on VaST.
- unmw - the server-side scripts that run the VaST-based transient detection for the NMW and NMW-TexasTech surveys.
- astrocam-go - the image uploader that watches for new images appearing on the camera control computer and sends them to the analysis server.
- Web-based lightcurve analysis tool - allows one to perform a period search using Lafler & Kinman (1965, ApJS, 11, 216) and Deeming (1975, Ap&SS, 36,137) methods.
- Times of minima calculator - a simple web-based tool to calculate times of minima from light elements.
- TIFF2FITS - a simple C program (based on CFITSIO and libtiff) which converts TIFF images to 16-bit FITS format. May be useful for processing scanned photographic plates.
- OMC2ASCII - a C program (based on CFITSIO) which converts INTEGRAL/OMC lightcurves from FITS table to simple ASCII table. May be useful if you don't want to install the Off-line Science Analysis (OSA) software just to get to INTEGRAL/OMC data.
- Online FITS-to-ASCII lightcurve converters are available for INTEGRAL/OMC and SuperWASP data. The converters are based on the OMC2ASCII code.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
You are welcome to use images and text materials presented at this page.
NMW survey team, 2011-2026