features for VOEvent v2.0

[Roy Williams]

Lynne Jones wrote:
> I would like to see orbital elements and ephemerides allow for uncertainties in the elements and in the ephemeris predictions. I don't know if that has already been thought of, but I know the most common source of ephemerides at the moment (the MPC) often doesn't include an ephemeris error, so thought it might be worth mentioning. 
>   

The LSST events can include whatever they like as Params. If you would 
like a parameter called "Eccentricity_Inclination_Covariance", there is 
no problem at all.

The question that we are chewing in the VOEvent Working Group is whether 
there should be special schema for orbital elements, meaning an XML 
element called <Eccentricity>.

In the former case, the author can be precise and idiosyncratic, but a 
human needs to read the description to find out what it really means. In 
the latter case, everyone is forced into the same data model that is 
defined by the IVOA, but the advantage is that different event providers 
can interoperate without a need for translation.

Roy

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California Institute of Technology
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