Using+the+VO+to+Study+the+Time+Domain

**Using the VO to Study the Time Domain**
Tara Murphy, //University of Sydney// Rob Seaman//, National Optical Astronomy Observatory// Roy Williams//, California Institute of Technology//

The workshop is in two parts, each offering a set of tools that you can use now for time-domain astronomy.

2:00 pm Introduction Presentation here: [|Skyalert-iau285.pptx] Hands-on tutorial on the Skyalert system -- bring your laptop. Skyalert gives access to a growing list of VOEvent transient alert streams from diverse sources including AAVSO, CRTS, CSS, Fermi, IAU/CBAT, MOA, and SWIFT. Whether the web version or a local install, Skyalert offers real-time notification and feeds, sophisticated selection criteria, associated data from VO archives, and the ability to run your own real-time classifier; we will also cover authoring, and mining with the JSON query services. **The links below (*) are part of the presentation**. Skyalert is:
 * Skyalert hands-on tutorial** (Roy Williams)
 * A web-based event broker, allowing subscription so that information about transients can be delivered to users and their telescopes immediately upon receipt.
 * A web-based authoring system, so that authenticated users can inject events direct from automated discovery pipelines, or fill in web forms, that may be delivered rapidly to others.
 * An event repository, storing all events that come through the broker, and allowing bulk queries and drill-down.
 * A ‘click or code’ paradigm that allows people web based access and machines web service access.
 * A way to see recent and past transients, as tables, multi-layered web pages, or with popular astronomical software.
 * A development platform for building real-time decision rules about transients, and for mining the repository.
 * Open-source software to allow local implementations as well as the web-based application.
 * The crucial standard that enables interoperable exchange of events is called VOEvent

Discussion 3:30 pm break

4:00 pm
 * VOEvent2** (Rob Seaman)
 * ATELstream: layering facilities on VO compliant protocols (Bob Rutledge)
 * VOEvent2 (Rob Seaman)
 * The IVOA VOEvent standard (http://voevent.org/) was first defined and prototyped in 2005 and reached official Recommendation status in 2006. It has been successfully adopted by many astronomical time domain projects since then. From the start it was recognized that more advanced features would be needed to grapple with the challenging time domain projects looming in the near future. We discuss such features in the recently adopted VOEvent2 standard. Copies of the book "Hotwiring the Transient Universe" (http://hotwireduniverse.org/) will be distributed to workshop attendees.
 * VAO Transient Facility (Matthew Graham)
 * The time domain community wants robust and reliable tools to enable production of and subscription to community-endorsed event notification packets (VOEvent). The VAO Transient Facility (VTF) is being designed to be the premier brokering service for the community, both collecting and disseminating observations about time-critical astronomical transients but also supporting annotations and the application of intelligent machine-learning to those observations. This distinguishes two types of activity associated with the facility: core infrastructure and user services. In this talk, we will review the prior art in both areas and describe the planned capabilities of the VTF. In particular, we will focus on scalability and quality-of-service issues required by the next generation of sky surveys, such as LSST and SKA.
 * VAO time series demo (Matthew for the VAO time series team) (see here for script)

Discussion 5:30 pm adjourn
 * Wrap-up** (Tara Murphy)

Workshop Summary:

(*) Skyalert Links Slide 2: [|http://lib.skyalert.org/skyalert/Guide2Skyalert-1.3.pdf] Slide 3: [|http://lib.skyalert.org/skyalert/] Slide 4: [|http://www.skyalert.org] Slide 5 and 6: [|http://ivoa.net/Documents/VOEvent/] Slide 7: [|http://www.skyalert.org/submit/] Slide 8: [|http://lib.skyalert.org/VOEventLib/] Slide 10: [|http://www.skyalert.org] Slide 13: [|http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/IDs.html] Slide 15: [|http://www.skyalert.org/streams/54/] Slide 16: [|http://www.skyalert.org/streams/] Slide 18: [|http://www.skyalert.org/events/46556/] Slide 19: [|http://www.skyalert.org/events/33547/] Slide 20: [|http://www.skyalert.org/events/49299/] Slide 22: [|http://www.skyalert.org/s/annotator.html] Slide 23: [|http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/] Slide 27: [|https://betelgeuse.ligo.caltech.edu:8000/streams/54/] Slide 28: [|https://betelgeuse.ligo.caltech.edu:8000/streams/sampleEvent/54/] Slide 29: [|https://betelgeuse.ligo.caltech.edu:8000/submit/] Slide 31: [|http://www.skyalert.org/s/authorcode.html] Slide 32: [|https://betelgeuse.ligo.caltech.edu:8000/rules/newrule/] Slide 33: [|https://betelgeuse.ligo.caltech.edu:8000/rules/337/] Slide 36: [|https://betelgeuse.ligo.caltech.edu:8000/events/49663/] Slide 38: [|http://www.skyalert.org/events/jtable/285/] Slide 39: [|http://www.skyalert.org/resolve/] Slide 41: []