VOEvent Session at the May 2011 Interop Meeting

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As with VOEvent itself, the VOEvent community is always looking forward to the next event. The next such is IAU Symposium 285, New Horizons in Time Domain Astronomy. A session at that symposium will be "Using the VO to Study the Time Domain", chaired by Rob Seaman, Roy WIlliams and Tara Murphy. IVOA protocols and services exist to pursue the science of astronomy. What steps must the IVOA take to properly support exciting trends in time domain astronomy?

VOEvent Session: Preliminary Schedule

Speaker	Title	Slides?	Time	Location
Tuesday May 17	VOEvent: Using the VO to Study the Time Domain		16.30-18.00	Room B
Rob Seaman	VOEvent status and update
Matthew Graham	SEAP status and update
Matthew Graham	VOEvent and the Registry
All	Discussion: VO and the time domain

As a conversation starter for the discussion, Roy suggests:

"I would say there are three places where the IVOA could benefit event science through its standards process, and the VO projects could benefit science through building robust software. See below for notes."

1) Transport

• • How will events be transported in real time?
  • Prototypes running now based on:
    • Email, Jabber/CACR, Jabber/LIGO, Dakota, ATELStream
  • Current differences preclude interoperability
  • Jabber standardization would be good if it comes with software!
    • plus bridges to Email, Dakota and ATELStream
  • Other issues: Who can send, Antispam measures, Signatures

2) Registry

• • Finding event streams and event servers
  • Is a sample event sufficient to define a stream?
  • Prototypes running now
    • based on Skyalert at CACR, LIGO, PSU, and LSST
  • Do we include replicated streams?
  • What about a modified stream -- eg links changed to local cache?
  • What about a stream that is a substream of another?

3) Query

• • Working with past events
  • How to query a set of portfolios not just lone events
    • Interesting queries are cross-stream
    • SEAP proposal could be expanded to SPAP (P=portfolio)
  • Prototypes running now:
    • Python SPAP in Skyalert, JSON from iPhones