We present the discovery of a faint, resolved stellar system, BLISS J0321+0438 (BLISS 1), found in Dark Energy Camera data from the first observing run of the Blanco Imaging of the Southern Sky (BLISS) survey. BLISS J0321+0438 (BLISS 1) is located at (alpha(2000), delta(2000)) = (177.degrees 511, -41.degrees 772) with a heliocentric distance of D-circle dot = 23.7(-1.0)(+1.9)kpc. It is a faint, M-V = 0.0(-0.7)(+1.7)mag, and compact, r(h) = 4.1(-1)(+1) pc, system consistent with previously discovered faint halo star clusters. Using data from the second data release of the Gaia satellite, we measure a proper motion of (mu(alpha )cos delta, mu(delta))= (-2.37 +/- 0.06, 0.16 +/- 0.04) mas yr(-1). Combining the available positional and velocity information with simulations of the accreted satellite population of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), we find that it is unlikely that BLISS J0321+0438 (BLISS 1) originated with the LMC.

Time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics are growing and important modes of observational astronomy that will help define astrophysics in the 2020s. Significant effort is being put into developing the components of a follow-up system for dynamically turning survey alerts into data. This system consists of: 1) brokers that will aggregate, classify, and filter alerts; 2) Target Observation Managers (TOMs) for prioritizing targets and managing observations and data; and 3) observatory interfaces, schedulers, and facilities along with data reduction software and science archives. These efforts need continued community support and funding in order to complete and maintain them. Many of the efforts can be community open-source software projects but they will benefit from the leadership of professional software developers. The coordination should be done by institutions that are involved in the follow-up system such as the national observatories (e.g. LSST/Gemini/NOAO Mid-scale/Community Science and Data Center) or a new MMA institute. These tools will help the community to produce the most science from new facilities and will provide new capabilities for all users of the facilities that adopt them.

Various recent discoveries have drastically altered our view of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), the nearest interacting galaxy system formed by a low mass spiral and a dwarf irregular galaxy. The best evidence is now that they are on frst infall into the Milky Way, that their stellar populations extend much further than previously thought, and that they display important galactocentric gradients. Several facts indicate that low mass spirals may not fit in the general framework of massive spiral galaxy formation. Thus, understanding the process of their formation and evolution is fundamental to understand the general process of galaxy formation. Because the MCs are so close, they are key to study the formation and evolution of galaxies because they other us the opportunity to derive their evolutionary histories, including the characteristics of the first events of star formation. This is thanks to the fact that, for them, we can obtain photometry and spectroscopy of individual stars, and use the theory of stellar evolution to calculate ages that will allow us to obtain the star formation and chemical enrichment histories in great detail. We are involved in a large survey of the MCs, called SMASH (Survey Magellanic Stellar History). It is a NOAO communityDECam survey of the Clouds mapping 480 deg^2 (distributed over ˜ 2400 deg^2 at ˜20 % filling factor) to 24th mag griz (and u ˜ 23). SMASH will: (1) map the stellar periphery of the Clouds with old main sequence turnoff stars to a surface brightness limit of 35 mag arcsec^{-2}, (2) identify the stellar component of the Magellanic Stream and Leading Arm for the first time, if they exist, and (3) derive spatially-resolved star formation histories covering all ages out to large radius from the Cloud centers. Our group at the IAC is the main responsible for objective (3).

In this contribution we present results from the QUEST RR Lyrae Survey of the thick disk. The survey spans ~480 sq. deg. at low latitude |b| < 30°, with multi-epoch VRI observations, obtained with the QUEST-I camera at the 1m Jürgen Stock Schmidt telescope located at the National Astronomical Observatory of Venezuela. This constitutes the first deep RR Lyrae survey of the Galactic thick disk conducted at low galactic latitudes, covering simultaneously a large range in radial (8

We describe the discovery circumstances and photometric properties of 2000 EB173, now one of the brightest trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with opposition magnitude m_R=18.9 and also one of the largest Plutinos, found with the drift-scanning camera of the QUEST Collaboration, attached to the 1-m Schmidt telescope of the National Observatory of Venezuela. We measure B-V = 0.99 +/- 0.14 and V-R = 0.57 +/- 0.05, a red color observed for many fainter TNOs. At our magnitude limit m_R = 20.1 +/- 0.20, our single detection reveals a sky density of 0.015 (+0.034, -0.012) TNOs per deg^2 (the error bars are 68% confidence limits), consistent with fainter surveys showing a cumulative number proportional to 10^0.5m_R. Assuming an inclination distribution of TNOs with FWHM exceeding 30 deg, it is likely that one hundred to several hundred objects brighter than m_R=20.1 remain to be discovered.

The optical transient of the faint gamma-ray burst GRB 990308 was detected by the QUEST camera on the Venezuelan 1 m Schmidt telescope starting 3.28 hr after the burst. Our photometry gives V = 18.32 +/- 0.07, R = 18.14 +/- 0.06, B = 18.65 +/- 0.23, and R = 18.22 +/- 0.05 for times ranging from 3.28 to 3.47 hr after the burst. The colors correspond to a spectral slope of close to f(v) proportional to nu(1/3). Within the standard synchrotron fireball model, this requires that the external medium be less dense than 10(4) cm(-3), the electrons contain more than 20% of the shock energy, and the magnetic field energy be less than 24% of the energy in the electrons for normal interstellar or circumstellar densities. We also report upper limits of V> 12.0 at 132 s (with LOTIS), V > 13.4 from 132 to 1029 s (with LOTIS), V>15.3 at 28.2 minutes (with Super-LOTIS), and a 8.5 GHz flux of less than 114 mu Jy at 110 days (with the Very Large Array). Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO 3.5 m and Keck 10 m telescopes reveal this location to be empty of any host galaxy to R > 25.7 and K> 23.3. The lack of a host galaxy likely implies that it is either substantially subluminous or more distant than a redshift of similar to 1.2.