Astro-COLIBRI: An Innovative Platform for Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astrophysics

TL;DR

Astro-COLIBRI is a comprehensive, real-time platform that integrates multi-messenger astrophysical alerts, providing contextual information, visualization, and observatory conditions to facilitate rapid follow-up and discovery.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integrated platform combining real-time alert ingestion, contextualization, visualization, and multi-observatory coordination for multi-messenger astrophysics.

Findings

Real-time alert ingestion from multiple sources.

Contextualization of astrophysical events across messengers.

Enhanced data visualization and observatory condition assessments.

Abstract

The discovery of transient phenomena, such as supernovae, novae, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), and stellar flares, together with the emergence of new cosmic messengers like high-energy neutrinos and Gravitational Waves (GWs), has revolutionized astrophysics in recent years. To fully exploit the scientific potential of multi-messenger and multi-wavelength follow-up observations, as well as serendipitous detections, researchers need a tool capable of rapidly compiling and contextualizing essential information for every new event. We present Astro-COLIBRI, an advanced platform designed to meet this challenge. Astro-COLIBRI is a comprehensive platform that combines a public RESTful API, real-time databases, a cloud-based alert system, and user-friendly interfaces including a website and mobile app for iOS and Android. It ingests alerts from multiple sources in real time, applies user-defined filters, and situates each event within its multi-messenger and multi-wavelength context. The platform provides clear data visualization, concise summaries of key event properties, and evaluations of observing conditions across a wide network of observatories worldwide. We here detail the architecture of Astro-COLIBRI, from the data pipelines that manage real-time alert ingestion and processing to the design of the RESTful API, which enables seamless integration with other astronomical software and services.