The Second VOEvent Workshop

December 5 and 6, Tucson, Arizona

Tycho's Stella Nova

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Introduction

VOEvent is the emerging International Virtual Observatory standard for distributing timely notifications of transient celestial events. The VOEvent specification provides a method for alerting subscribers to celestial phenomena in need of rapid, often automatic, observational follow-up. The IVOA VOEvent working group is responsible for continuing to develop the specification and for motivating the development of conforming systems, interoperable with each other and with prior community resources.

A common vision for VOEvent was forged at the first VOEvent workshop at Caltech in April 2005. The fruits of that workshop included v1.0 of the VOEvent XML specification, as well as example packets and a schema for validating those packets. Initial transport prototypes have been designed and deployed, and as a result actual event streams from such phenomena as gamma ray bursts are being captured as conforming VOEvent packets.

At the second VOEvent workshop, we hope to continue rapid progress on resolving thorny technical issues such as the proper semantics for specifying astronomical space-time coordinates or for specifying the classification of astronomical objects and processes. In addition, renewed attention will be directed to understanding the science drivers common to all time domain astronomy. VOEvent does not exist in a vacuum, and seeks to both benefit from, and provide evolutionary benefit to, prior astronomical transient event alert systems.

Registration

Please contact Rob Seaman (seaman@noao.edu) as soon as convenient.

Location

National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO)
950 N Cherry Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85719

• Map

• Somewhat suspect Directions

Or: Take the only exit out of the airport and go straight until you turn right on Kino Parkway; remain on Kino for several miles until you turn left into the main entrance of the University of Arizona; turn right on Cherry and right again into the NOAO visitors parking lot.

The sessions will take place in the Main Conference Room.

Travel

There is a list of Tucson hotels on the Univ. of Arizona visitor web pages. Click here for Tucson Hotels. The Four Points Sheraton is the absolutely closest hotel, but the University Marriott is better located with respect to restaurants and shops.

There are many unique things to do while in Tucson.

Sponsors

• Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
• National Optical Astronomy Observatory
• U.S. National Virtual Observatory

Agenda

• VOEvent II Agenda
• Workshop Poster

Background

• First Workshop
• VOEvent Working Group

Some highlighted topics

• What can VOEvent offer current telegrams? (CBAT, MPC, ATEL)
• Interoperability with GCN including eStar & Raptor

• LSST science operations
• Gemini rapid response queue
• UKIRT GRB observations & WFCAM alerts
• SNe alerts from NOAO Supermacho and Essence surveys

• Transport architecture (publishers, registries, IDs)
• VOConcepts - namespaces for UCDs
• STC/Lite (VO Space-Time Coordinates)
• Alert authentication via embedded digital signatures

• VOEvent-Net project
• NVO Summer School VOEvent Demo

• Contact seaman@noao.edu with suggestions or if you wish to make a presentation.

Schedule

• Monday and Tuesday, Dec 5-6, will consist of presentations, discussions, resolution of action items, etc., pertinent to all who are interested in sky transient astronomy.
• Wednesday, Dec 7, a small group of projects actively planning prototype VOEvent alert networks will hold a mini-interop session. Contact seaman@noao.edu if you are interested in participating in Wednesday's session.

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Presentations

Monday, December 5

• VOEvent v1.0 specification (new) - Rob Seaman (see also Latest VOEvent draft)
• eSTAR - Alasdair Allan (eSTAR Project)
• TALON/RAPTOR - Robert White (Thinking Telescope Project)

• GCN - Scott Barthelmy (GRB Coordinates Network)
• ESSENCE, Super MACHO & DES - Chris Smith (ESSENCE, SuperMACHO & DES)

• UKIRT - Frossie Economou (UKIRT Flexible Scheduling)
• LBT & VOEvent - Mark Wagner (Large Binocular Telescope)
• Space-Time Coordinates - Arnold Rots (Latest STC draft, WhereWhen with Regions)

• Solar transient events - Frank Hill (Virtual Solar Observatory, Example of a space weather forecast, Graphical display of alerts, Example SEC NOAA alerts & forecasts, More alerts)
• Microlensing surveys & follow-ups - Kem Cook

Tuesday, December 6

• LSST & VOEvent - Robyn Allsman (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope)
• HETE - Nat Butler - Nat Butler (High Energy Transient Explorer or HETE-2 Satellite)
• Transients from NEAT - Ashish Mahabal (Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking)

• VOEventNet - Matthew Graham - Matthew Graham (VOEventNet)
• Transporting & publishing VOEvents - Andrew Drake - Andrew Drake (VOEventNet events)
• HTN workshop - Alasdair Allan (Heterogeneous Telescope Networks or HTN)

• CBAT/MPC - Dan Green (see below)

• VOConcepts / UCDs - Rick Hessman
• Andrea's version of Rick Hessman's VO vocabulary
• The VO and the Semantic Web - Norman Gray (also see Ed Shaya's group's ontology work)

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Workshop Summary

* VOEvent mailing list archive

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Links to IAU naming and alert centers

Minor Planet Center

• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/info/TechInfo.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/info/ObsFormat.html
• http://scully.harvard.edu/~cgi/CheckSN
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/NEO/ToConfirm.html

Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams

• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/DiscoveryInfo.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/HowToReportItem.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/CBAT_PSN.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/CBAT_M31.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/RecentSupernovae.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Headlines.html

International Comet Quarterly

• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/icq/icq.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/icq/ICQFormat.html

             

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