Cross-Observatory Coordination with tilepy: A Novel Tool for Observations of Multi-Messenger Transient Events

TL;DR

tilepy is a Python tool designed to automate and optimize follow-up observations of poorly localized transient events in multi-messenger astrophysics, enhancing coordination across observatories and wavelengths.

Contribution

The paper introduces tilepy, a novel, flexible Python package that automates scheduling for multi-observatory follow-ups, addressing localization and volume challenges in multi-messenger astrophysics.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated in multi-observatory campaigns

Improves coverage of localization uncertainty regions

Available publicly on GitHub and via API

Abstract

Time-domain astrophysics has leaped forward with the direct discovery of gravitational waves and the emergence of new generation instruments for multi-messenger studies. The capacity of the multi-messenger multi-wavelength community to effectively pursue follow-up observations is hindered by the suboptimal localization of numerous transient events and the escalating volume of alerts. Thus, we have developed an effective tool to overcome the observational and technical hurdles inherent in the emerging field of multi-messenger astrophysics. We present tilepy, a Python package for the automatic scheduling of follow-up observations of poorly localized transient events. It is ideally suited to tackle the challenge of complex follow-up in mid and small-FoV telescope campaigns, with or without human intervention. We demonstrate the capabilities of tilepy in the realm of multi-observatory, multi-wavelength campaigns, to cover the localization uncertainty region of various events ultimately aiming at pinpointing the source of the multi-messenger emission. The tilepy code is publicly available on GitHub and is sufficiently flexible to be employed either automatically or in a customized manner, tailored to collaboration and individual requirements. tilepy is also accessible via a public API and through the Astro-COLIBRI platform.