A modest proposal for VOEvent

[Rob Seaman]

Hi Roy,

Again - consensus is the most important thing here.  Simplicity is a  
close second.  My preference is for orbital elements to appear in  
WhereWhen, but I could see this moving to What if Params are the  
consensus, or perhaps Params moving to WhereWhen or perhaps a tidy  
little bit of dedicated schema.  Would prefer that consensus be  
arrived at through cogent, not loud, argumentation.

Rob
----

On Feb 22, 2009, at 7:00 PM, Roy Williams wrote:

> Perhaps we can use the existing VOEvent structure, with no need to  
> add any extra schema (see below). The Group type (eg ="ephemeris")  
> tells the software what Params to expect inside. Everything can be  
> represented with what we already have!
>
> Roy
>
> ----------------------------------
>
> <What>
> <Group name="Pluto" type="orbit">
> <Param name="q"             unit="AU"  dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="e"                        dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="i"             unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="node"          unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="time_peri_MJD" unit="MJD" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="arg_peri"      unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="epoch"         unit="MJD" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="src" value="1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17  
> 18 19 20 21" />
> </Group>
>
> Then we would add geocentric ephemeris
>
> <Group name="E012" type="ephemeris">
> <Param name="ephem_type"                              
> value="geocentric"/>
> <Param name="ra"         unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="dec"        unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="mjd"        unit="day" dataType="float" value="123" />
> </ephemeris>
>
> And the detections used to derive the orbit
>
> <Group name="D023" type="detections">
> <Param name="ra"  unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="dec" unit="deg" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="mjd" unit="day" dataType="float" value="123" />
> <Param name="obscode"                         value="123" />
> </Group>
> </What>
> -- 
>
> California Institute of Technology
> 626 395 3670