VAST: An ASKAP survey for variables and slow transients
The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) will give us an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the transient sky at radio wavelengths. In this paper we present VAST, an ASKAP survey for Variables and Slow Transients. VAST will exploit t ; This research has been supported in part by the Australian Research Council (ARC). TM, BMG, PJH, JB, and MEB acknowledge support through grants FS100100033 and DP110102034, and through the Science Leveraging Fund of the New South Wales Office for Science and Medical Research. SAF is the recipient of an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship, DP110102889. TM, BMG, and S. Croft acknowledge funding from theUniversity of Sydney International Program Development Fund. The Centre for All-sky Astrophysics is an Australian Research CouncilCentre of Excellence, funded by grant CE110001020. S. Chatterjee acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through the award AST- 1008213. DLK was partially supported by NSF awards AST-1008353 and AST-0908884. SGD acknowledges partial support from the NSF grants AST-0407448, AST-0909182, and IIS-1118041, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant 08-AISR08-0085. IHS is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant. A portion of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. US Government sponsorship is acknowledged.