10 years of the
Next Generation
Transit Survey
Isle of Skye, Scotland 24th-28th May 2027
The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) has now been in operation for a decade. Conceived as the successor to the hugely succesful Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP), NGTS achieves the very best ground-based photometry of exoplanet transits. Our location at the ESO Paranal Observatory, alongside the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), provides the clearest skies in the world. The twelve robotic telescopes of the NGTS facility have been custom designed to eliminate systematic noise, and they are fitted with back-illuminated deep-depletion Teledyne e2v CCD cameras that have been developed in collaboration with our industrial partners: Andor Technology. Together these allow the NGTS facility to deliver photometric precision of 150ppm in 30min, which matches the the precision of space telescopes such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
Since achieving first light in 2015, and beginning full survey operations in 2016, NGTS has discovered 45 new exoplanets and contributed to the discovery of another 30. These include some of the most exciting discoveries in modern exoplanet science such as the `Monster Planet'; NGTS-1b, one of the first giant planets found around an M-dwarf star, the `Forbidden planet'; NGTS-4b, the smallest transiting planet ever detected from the ground and the first planet to be found in the so-called `Neptune desert', as well as some of the shortest-period `ultra-hot-Jupiters' such as NGTS-6b and NGTS-10b. With the advent of NASA's (TESS mission, NGTS has transitioned from being a dedicated survey facility to providing photometric followup for the most exciting discoveries from TESS. In particular this has led to the confirmation of some of the longest period transiting planets, including systems such as NGTS-11b - the first exoplanet discovered from just a single TESS transit and more recently NGTS-38b - one of the longest period transiting planets ever discovered. NGTS also provides photometric support for flagship facilties such as the James Webb Space Telscope and ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). We recently demonstrated that NGTS photometry provides the very best method for detrending stellar activity from radial velocity measurements using the VLT/ESPRESSO spectrograph, allowing exoplanets masses to be measured that we previously beyond reach. Beyond exoplanets, NGTS has also been enabling cutting edge science in the fields of binary stars, stellar flares and other areas of time-domain astronomy.
To celebrate ten years of NGTS, we are hosting a special conference on the Isle of Skye in Scotland from the 24th to the 28th of May 2027. The conference aims celebrate the work of as many people as possible who have contributed to our success over the last decade, as well as looking forward to exciting new discoveries in exoplanet science and beyond. We are excitied to welcome NGTS consortium members, collaborators, old friends and new to Skye to celebrate the first ten years of the Next Generation Transit Survey.