eSTAR VOEvent Services

[Alasdair Allan]

All,

I've just moved the eSTAR event broker and associated services lock  
stock and barrel to the new server rack here in Exeter. This means  
that the TCP end point of the event broker and some of the pages  
associated with it have now moved.

Below is an outline of available services and changes. The most  
important point is that if you ran an event client which was  
connected to the old eSTAR event broker you need to change the host  
name it is pointing at to 'estar6.astro.ex.ac.uk'. Previously you  
were pointing your client to 'estar3.astro.ex.ac.uk' or possibly  
'vo.astro.ex.ac.uk'.

It's important to note that neither the RSS, nor KML, feed locations  
have changed.

If anyone spots any broken links on the eSTAR site that point towards  
web applications that have now moved, I'd appreciate a heads up...

1) Vanilla TCP

The eSTAR project publishes event messages in real time through a TCP  
server which you can connect up to very simply. A sample client is  
available on the eSTAR web site at

    http://www.estar.org.uk/wiki/index.php/ESTAR_Event_Broker

and the TCP server is available on,

estar6.astro.ex.ac.uk

on port,

8099

to which you can connect.

This is a "hose pipe" feed as you are connecting directly onto a  
backbone node.

2) RSS

If near real time is "good enough", then you also have the option to  
subscribe to event messages via RSS. You can subscribe to these as  
normal using your news aggregator. However if you do not already use  
a news aggregator, there are many freely available clients that you  
can use to read the RSS feeds, and numerous different convenience  
libraries around to let your grab the feeds programatically in your  
language of choice.

There are several RSS feeds available from the eSTAR broker, these  
are currently broken down by the original publisher;

eSTAR native
Including native (Robonet-1.0) messages and OGLE microlensing event  
messages
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/eSTAR/eSTAR.rdf

RAPTOR/TALONS
Including native messages, and a translation of the GCN
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/RAPTOR/RAPTOR.rdf

Caltech
Including SDSS, Palomar-Quest and other messages, and a translation  
of the GCN
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/Caltech/Caltech.rdf

NOAO
Including ESSENCE messages
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/NOAO/NOAO.rdf

Angstrom
Manually triggered messages from the Angstrom project
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/Angstrom/Angstrom.rdf

PLANET
Manually trigger microlensing anomaly messages from PLANET
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/PLANET/PLANET.rdf

Robonet-1.0
Manually trigger microlensing anomaly messages from Robonet-1.0
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/Robonet-1.0/Robonet-1.0.rdf

DC3
Test feed for Bob Denny
http://www.estar.org.uk/voevent/DC3/DC3.rdf

4) Dashboard Widget

The event dashboard widgets need to be updated to point to the new  
feed locations. This will happen sometime today and an updated  
version will be made available on the eSTAR site. Current version in  
the wild will point to the wrong end point and, as a consequence, not  
update correctly. Look for new versions at

http://www.estar.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Downloads

either today (or at a push tomorrow).

5) Timelines

The OGLE and SDSS timelines on the eSTAR site should work correctly.  
There may be the odd broken link to these scattered around the  
website though, hopefully I'll catch most of these.

Any questions, just get in touch...

Cheers,
Al.