Responding to the Event Deluge

TL;DR

This paper introduces VOEventNet, an infrastructure enabling rapid, large-scale follow-up of astronomical events through distributed services, standardization, and machine intelligence, crucial for upcoming data streams from major observatories.

Contribution

It presents the VOEventNet infrastructure and standard, facilitating distributed, automated, and coordinated astronomical event follow-up, a significant advancement over previous centralized systems.

Findings

Implementation of VOEventNet infrastructure and standards

Integration with multiple astronomical event streams

Enhanced coordination and automation capabilities

Abstract

We present the VOEventNet infrastructure for large-scale rapid follow-up of astronomical events, including selection, annotation, machine intelligence, and coordination of observations. The VOEvent standard is central to this vision, with distributed and replicated services rather than centralized facilities. We also describe some of the event brokers, services, and software that are connected to the network. These technologies will become more important in the coming years, with new event streams from Gaia, LOFAR, LIGO, LSST, and many others.