Using the VO to Study the Time Domain

TL;DR

The paper discusses how the Virtual Observatory infrastructure and standards, such as VOEvent and time-series protocols, support time-domain astronomy research by enabling efficient detection, reporting, and analysis of transient celestial events.

Contribution

It highlights the development and application of VO standards and tools for managing and analyzing time-varying astronomical phenomena in the Virtual Observatory framework.

Findings

VOEvent format effectively represents transient alerts

SkyAlert and ATELstream facilitate alert distribution

Time-series tools support real-world astronomer needs

Abstract

Just as the astronomical "Time Domain" is a catch-phrase for a diverse group of different science objectives involving time-varying phenomena in all astrophysical regimes from the solar system to cosmological scales, so the "Virtual Observatory" is a complex set of community-wide activities from archives to astroinformatics. This workshop touched on some aspects of adapting and developing those semantic and network technologies in order to address transient and time-domain research challenges. It discussed the VOEvent format for representing alerts and reports on celestial transient events, the SkyAlert and ATELstream facilities for distributing these alerts, and the IVOA time-series protocol and time-series tools provided by the VAO. Those tools and infrastructure are available today to address the real-world needs of astronomers.