Markus Hundertmark | The Omega Key Projects at LCO - Looking Outside the Central Bulge

Understanding the distribution and properties of stellar remnants, brown dwarfs and exoplanets is essential for models of stellar evolution, planet formation and black hole formation. At the same time, these objects are still difficult to detect, not only by traditional methods, but also in microlensing events alerted by survey teams. Monitoring events outside the central bulge region remains a challenge, preventing more comprehensive studies of these populations and their properties. LCO's geographically distributed network of telescopes is being used as part of the OMEGA key projects to provide high-cadence photometry and time-series spectroscopy of transient targets discovered by wide-area surveys such as Gaia and ZTF. The OMEGA project's custom target and monitoring managers automatically prioritize monitoring requests in response to survey alerts. We provide updates on analysis of current and past events, project status, and future plans