IVOA and ADASS?

[Rob Seaman]

On Jul 2, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Andrew Drake wrote:

> Let's not limit this to lightcurves.
> Astrometric timeseries is going to be important
> to the major event generators.

I think the only major event generator we're interested in is the  
Almighty :-)

A VOEvent packet is a report alerting the community to an event that  
has occurred in the sky.

> Also, although some of may disagree, I think an
> event is really part of a timeseries not the
> other way around.


VOEvent already supports both points of view.  A time series can be  
constructed internal to a packet using the param mechanism (this is  
one of the examples in the spec) - or a time series can be constructed  
externally as a thread of follow-up packets.  For v2.0 we are seeking  
to improve the internal mechanism.

Perhaps we will also discover some desirable improvements related to  
time domain follow-ups.  Most of our follow-up use cases have been  
rather ad hoc in nature - target of opportunity observing modes, for  
instance.  Are there any aspects of issuing a rapid sequence of  
several related, sequentially timestamped, packets that we need to  
explore and enhance?  Do we think this will represent a significant  
fraction of the usage?  After all, one key concept is to traverse a  
thread of follow-up packets and abstract the evolving behavior of the  
source(s) and related (and perhaps only inferred) celestial object(s).

Rob