Infrastructure and Strategies for Time Domain and MMA and Follow-Up

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of infrastructure and strategies for time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics, emphasizing the importance of follow-up systems, community support, and open-source tools to maximize scientific returns.

Contribution

It outlines the components and coordination needed for follow-up systems in time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics, highlighting community and institutional roles.

Findings

Development of alert aggregation and classification systems

Proposal for community-supported open-source software projects

Need for institutional coordination and funding

Abstract

Time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics are growing and important modes of observational astronomy that will help define astrophysics in the 2020s. Significant effort is being put into developing the components of a follow-up system for dynamically turning survey alerts into data. This system consists of: 1) brokers that will aggregate, classify, and filter alerts; 2) Target Observation Managers (TOMs) for prioritizing targets and managing observations and data; and 3) observatory interfaces, schedulers, and facilities along with data reduction software and science archives. These efforts need continued community support and funding in order to complete and maintain them. Many of the efforts can be community open-source software projects but they will benefit from the leadership of professional software developers. The coordination should be done by institutions that are involved in the follow-up system such as the national observatories (e.g. LSST/Gemini/NOAO Mid-scale/Community Science and Data Center) or a new MMA institute. These tools will help the community to produce the most science from new facilities and will provide new capabilities for all users of the facilities that adopt them.