Transient Response Astronomy
How & Why
Rob Seaman, NOAO
Roy Williams, Caltech(present & past Chairs of the IVOA VOEvent WG)

Many meetings since 2005
 VOEvent workshops
 HTN workshops
 Transient Universe 2006 meeting Hotwired meetings (http://hotwireduniverse.org)
 IVOA sessions (VOEvent & Semantics WGs) ADASS BoFs
 NVO Summer Schools SPIE 2006
 VOEventNet meeting Robots at the Austin AAS
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan2

5 October 2009

More meetings coming…
 IVOA InterOp – 9-13 Nov 2009 dotAstronomy – 30 Nov - 4 Dec 2009
 The Eventful Universe (NOAO 50th) – 17-20 Mar 2010
 IVOA InterOp – 17-21 May 2010
 VAO @ AAS – 23-27 May 2010
 SPIE 2010, Observatory Operations III – 27 Jun - 2 Jul 2010
 ADASS XX BoF – 7-11 Nov 2010
 2011 – Hotwired III
 2012 – Joint Discussion @ IAU General Assembly?
 Comm. 5 (WG-VO) & Comm. 6 (Astronomical Telegrams)
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

35 October 2009

More meetings coming…
 IVOA InterOp – 9-13 Nov 2009 dotAstronomy – 30 Nov - 4 Dec 2009
 The Eventful Universe (NOAO 50th) – 17-20 Mar 2010
 IVOA InterOp – 17-21 May 2010
 VAO @ AAS – 23-27 May 2010
 SPIE 2010, Observatory Operations III – 27 Jun - 2 Jul 2010
 ADASS XX BoF – 7-11 Nov 2010
 2011 – Hotwired III
 2012 – Joint Discussion @ IAU General Assembly?
Comm. 5 (WG-VO) & Comm. 6 (Astronomical Telegrams)
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

45 October 2009

Transient Response Astronomy
How & WhySherlock Holmes
The patron saint of How & Why,suggesting a different title…

ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

65 October 2009

…orThe Giant Rat of Sumatra“…a story for which the worldis not yet prepared.”- “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”
by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

75 October 2009

Why transient response?
 Things go bump in the night the sky is big
 transients are rare events occur randomly in space & time …and have obscure physical signatures
 vs. contention for observing resources Even giant rats can be hard to find
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

85 October 2009

“A halfassed comeback containing only one good joke.” - Rolling Stone!
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

95 October 2009

Why? The Rat has friends Large Synoptic Survey
 Pan-STARRS Dark Energy Survey
…

ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

105 October 2009

The Rat is rare & valuable
 Gamma-Ray Bursts
 Neutrinos
 Gravitational waves
 Solar system debris
…
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

115 October 2009

The Rat will always remain atarget-of-opportunity, requiring: Rapid response Ubiquitous delivery
 Diverse subscribers
 Flexible follow-up
 Reliable semantic classification
 Autonomous workflows
 We must build a better rat-trapADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

125 October 2009

But the Rat lives within abackground limited universe

WMAP
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

135 October 2009 Further in space,Deeper in time Transients are
milestones in themaster timeline ofcosmic history
 Distant transientsprobe the momentof creation
 Local transientsare close enoughto touchmeteors, comets, …
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan14

5 October 2009

How to respond to transients?
To quote from Sherlock Holmes:“Results without causes aremuch more impressive.”
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

155 October 2009How?
The VOEvent standard of the IVOA
is one ingredient for constructing
flexible, efficient, autonomousarchitectures for carrying out
experimental investigations whentime is of the essence.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan16

5 October 2009

How?
“VOEvent defines the content &meaning of a standard information
packet for representing, transmitting,publishing & archiving the discovery
of a transient celestial event, with theimplication that timely follow-up isbeing requested.”
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan17

5 October 2009

VOEvent
 Who
 What Where When How WhyADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan18

5 October 2009

VOEvent Who – author’s provenance What Where When How
 Why
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

195 October 2009

VOEvent Who – author’s provenance What – empirical measurements
 Where When How
 Why
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan20

5 October 2009

VOEvent Who – author’s provenance What – empirical measurements
 Where – targeting in space When – constraints in time
 How
 Why
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

215 October 2009

VOEvent Who – author’s provenance What – empirical measurements
 WhereWhen – targeting in spacetime
 How
 Why
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan22

5 October 2009

VOEvent Who – author’s provenance What – empirical measurements
 WhereWhen – targeting in spacetime
 How – instrumental signature Why
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan23

5 October 2009

VOEvent Who – author’s provenance What – empirical measurements
 WhereWhen – targeting in spacetime
 How – instrumental signature Why – scientific characterization
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan24

5 October 2009

VOEvent IVOA recommendation:
 http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/VOEvent.html

 XML schema: http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VOEvent/VOEvent-v1.1.xsd

 Working group: http://voevent.org
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5 October 2009

VOEventNet

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5 October 2009

VOEventNet
 Publish / Subscribe paradigm
 Backbone sites – full packet feeds
 Network of brokers
 forwarding
 filtering bridging
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan27

5 October 2009

VOEvent is transport-neutral Backbone: TCP “vanilla”
 Jabber XML-RPC

 Clients:
 SMTP, SMS, RSS, …
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan28

5 October 2009

VOEvent is IVOA-aware
 SEAP – Simple Event Access Protocol
 STC
 Vocabularies & semantics
 VOTable
 SAMP-enabled
…

ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan29

5 October 2009

VOEvent is growing V2.0 (time series, orbital elements, …)
 VOEventStreams in registry SEAP Infrastructure (& transport)
 Client applications (author & subscribe) Community (eg., LSST data challenge)
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan30

5 October 2009

VOEvent is growing V2.0 (time series, orbital elements, …)
 VOEventStreams in registry SEAP Infrastructure (& transport)
 Client applications (author & subscribe) Community (eg., LSST data challenge)
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan31

5 October 2009

Sherlock Holmes on
Transient Response Astronomy
 “When you have excluded the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable,must be the truth.” In the time domain, astronomers study
unprecedented phenomena subject todramatically differing interpretations.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan32

5 October 2009

 “Chance has put in our way a mostsingular and whimsical problem, andits solution is its own reward.”
 Serendipity is the engine of discovery.
 VOEvent is a luck management system.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan33

5 October 2009 “The world is full of obvious things which
nobody by any chance ever observes.”
 Taking advantage of rare opportunities
requires careful planning and thedeployment of resources in advance.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan34

5 October 2009 “It is a capital mistake to theorize before
you have all the evidence. It biases thejudgment.”
 Science depends on synthesizing diverse
observations to discover underlying rules,
that is, on building empirical workflows.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan35

5 October 2009 “I am glad of all details, whether they
seem to you to be relevant or not.” Filtering of data should be postponed
to as late in the workflow as possible.
 Different investigators need different
things from the event stream.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan36

5 October 2009 “The reasoner can produce an effectwhich seems remarkable to his neighbor,because the latter has missed the one littlepoint which is the basis of the deduction.” Information without efficient access andeffective query tools is useless.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan37

5 October 2009 “I have no desire to make mysteries, but it
is impossible at the moment of action toenter into long & complex explanations.”
 Autonomous systems are needed to allow
removing humans from the loop.

ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan38

5 October 2009 “What one man can invent, another candiscover.” Astronomy requires a standard transientalert protocol
 …only a single transient alert protocol.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan39

5 October 2009 “I wonder how a battery feels when itpours electricity into a non-conductor.”
 Astronomy requires a common transientalert network …only a single transient alert network.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan40

5 October 2009 “My life is spent in one long effort toescape from the commonplace ofexistence.”
 Time domain projects (synoptic as well astransient-response) require commitment toa lengthy and diligent search process.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan

41

5 October 2009 “Nothing clears up a case so much as
stating it to another person.” A publish-subscribe paradigm is needed
to connect surveys that discover celestialtransients with the astronomical assets
used to study these events.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan42

5 October 2009

 “Only one important thing has happenedin the last three days, and that is that
nothing has happened.”
 Steady state behavior is also significant
in classifying, characterizing andunderstanding phenomena.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan43

5 October 2009 “It is the second most interesting object
that I have seen in the North.” Celestial transient alerts must convey
human-oriented context and semantics.
 …even as humans recede from directcontrol of observatory systems.
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan44

5 October 2009

Two more quotes from Holmes
 “Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up!” “If you approach me, Watson, I shallorder you out of the house.”

ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan45

5 October 2009

The game is afoot!

Coming soon, our book:
http://hotwireduniverse.org
Questions?
ADASS XIX, Sapporo, Japan46

5 October 2009