some remarks on VOEvent

[Ashish Mahabal]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, Rob Seaman wrote:

......

> That's actually a good example that may illuminate these issues.  It
> would be straightforward to describe a specific ocean tide
> measurement in a VOEvent packet.  These are certainly observations of
> astronomical events, after all.  Conjectures on tidal expressions in
> astronomical ontologies?  Will these support generalized central
> force representations?  And will they be expressed as spatial
> derivatives of Kepler's or Newton's laws?  Or, rather, directly as an
> inverse cube?

Or a comet breaking up. Once it is seen to break up, does each part form a
separate VOEvent? Or is it a single VOEvent extending over larger and
larger distance. What when some of the pieces have banged into a planet
and others have not?

This question has been asked before:
Should we try to describe everything for everyone? Or should we choose
"sensible" (clearly a politically incorrect term in this context, what I
mean is events that 3-sigma astronomers care about) events and build more
stable structures around those?

-ashish

Ashish Mahabal, Caltech Astronomy, Pasadena, CA 91125
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~aam aam at astro.caltech.edu

My computer isn't that nervous...it's just a bit ANSI.