The SALT transient follow-up programme began in 2016 and will continue for 5 semesters (until 31 Oct 2018), with an expectation of renewal thereafter. It is currently the only SALT Large Science Programme, and was awarded ~250 ksec. per semester, with a significant fraction (60%) given for the highest priority target-of-opportunity time. The aim is to characterise and study transients across a wide range of classes, currently including (from closest to most distant) cataclysmic variables, novæ and other associated eruptive variables, low- and high-mass X-ray binaries, OGLE and Gaia transients (including tidal disruption events), super-luminous and unusual core-collapse supernovæ, kilonovæ and other candidate optical counterparts to gravitational-wave events, flaring blazars and AGN, and gamma-ray bursts. This programme currently involves four SALT partners, of which South Africa is the major contributor of time (74%) and resources and includes five institutions with over 30 co-investigators. This talk reviewed the nature of the programme and highlighted some of the results to date.

In addition to its main goal of measuring the parallaxes of 109 stars in the Galaxy, ESA’s Gaia mission is also probing the time domain on a range of astrophysically interesting time-scales. The photometric measurements are processed for transient variability, and events that are discovered are published as a public alerts stream, known as Gaia Science Alerts. This talk gave an overview of the project to date, and highlighted its unique characteristics as a transient survey. It discussed briefly some of the recent scientific results which illustrate the broad range of science investigations enabled by the data. Gaia Alerts is particularly suited to the study of Galactic populations, as it covers the Galactic Plane with high astrometric precision and photometric accuracy.