Transient Event Reporting and Response with VOEvent

摘要

Evanescing astronomical phenomena will be key to dramatic scientific discoveries over the next decades. Large telescopes such as LSST and Pan-STARRS will survey the time domain with unprecedented breadth and depth. Networks of nimble robotic response telescopes (Allan 2006) yearn like locusts anticipating their next meal. A common language for describing observations of transients must span from synoptic discovery to robotic follow-up and through to VO-driven characterization. VOEvent is that lingua franca.