voeventnet.org | real-time astronomy

VOEventNet: Real-Time Astronomy with a Rapid-Response Telescope Grid

This animated image shows a small asteroid moving across the sky during four successive frames. Asteroids are a major source of transient sky events. Click here for a larger animated image, but with five asteroids! (Courtesy Catalina Sky Survey).

VOEventNet is pleased to offer Google mashups of recent events in the sky (gamma-ray bursts, microlensing events, supernovae, and unknown transients). Please install the latest Google Earth and then click here or on any of the Google links below. The same content is also offered by RSS feed, web page, and instant message (Jabber protocol).

VOEventNet enables rapid and federated observations of the dynamic night sky. VOEventNet gathers streams of astronomical alerts and reports in a common format, and acts as a clearinghouse, so that both people and robotic systems can get the alerts quickly enough to respond with follow-up observations. It includes a standard format for describing transient events, generation of event streams from current surveys, publication, archiving and persistent identifiers for events; and transportation of events to interested subscribers, with all of this happening automatically in seconds or minutes after discovery. VOEventNet offers real-time dynamic feeds from many organizations and observing programs, and the reported events include supernovae, gamma ray bursts, microlensing, and asteroid discoveries. Read more about VOEventNet in the Project Description.


How can I see the Events?

VOEventNet offeres several ways to receive and understand astronomical event feeds, some designed for humans, some for robot controllers of telescopes:

HTML

Web pages. Many of the feeds have a continuously updated table, with the most recent events at the top, and with links to the observed data, finding charts, etc.
RSS

RSS feed. The RSS protocol was designed to aggregate new content from multiple sites. Many client applications can read RSS feeds, including many mail clients, web browsers, etc.
Google

The Sky layer of Google Earth can show VOEventNet feeds as a mashup of locations on the sky, with the age in hours of each event, and with links to the full technical content.
Jabber

Jabber is a specialized socket protocol for receiving event notification immediately. They require installing software on the client machine. Click here for the Jabber client.

What Feeds are Offered?

VOEventNet offers several event feeds, including:

1. The GCN (Gamma-Ray Coordinates Network) currently reports events from these sources:
  • The SWIFT orbiting observatory for gamma and X-ray bursts
  • The Milagro ground-based observatory for very high energy gamma photons
 
GCN
HTML
 GCN
RSS
 GCN
Google
 GCN
Jabber

 
 

2. The GRBlog reports the interpretations of events previously reported through GCN. Most of these are the "GCN circulars".

 

 
 

3. The OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment), searches for dark matter with microlensing phenomena in the Magellanic Clouds and the Galactic Bulge.

 
OGLE
HTML
OGLE
RSS
OGLE
Google

 
 

4. The MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) searches for stars undergoing the microlensing phenomena toward the Galactic Bulge.

 
MOA
HTML
MOA
RSS
MOA
Google
 MOA
Jabber
 

5. The Catalina Survey delivers the event types described below:

  • Optical Transients
  • Short timescale Variable Sources
 
Catalina Transients
RSS		 Catalina Transients
Google
Catalina
VariableSources
RSS		  
 

6. The PI of the Sky delivers the event types described below:

  • Short timescale optical transients
 
PI of the Sky
RSS
 


VOEventNet is sponsored by NSF Grant No. CNS-0540369 and includes collaborators
at Caltech, UC Berkeley, LANL, and NOAO.