VOEvent "Breaking News"?

[Joshua Bloom]

Well, I think of the CBAT and IAUC as a publication platform with authority. There is refereeing but minimal editorializing about the content of what gets published. The CBAT and IAUC are more like the entire cnn website or google news aggregation.  What I think Rob is getting at is a mechanism to push out the most interesting events where "most interesting" is somehow determined by an editorial board (human or robotic). Those events are the "headlines" not just a random Reuters news article in the Sports section about the latest tantrum of a tennis player (i.e.. Murray) in Australia.

So what about we cabal up and issue a "transient of the week" (to get started) to see what it would take to get going on this path. We could eventually do a transient of the day and then push out interesting transients without human intervention.

Josh




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Joshua Bloom
Associate Professor
UC Berkeley, Astronomy
510-643-4621 (Lab)
510-643-3839 (Office)
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On Jan 30, 2010, at 11:09 AM, Roy Williams wrote:

> Joshua Bloom wrote:
>> I suppose the biggest hurdle is not the technology but the authority factor.
> Absolutely! That is the crux of it!
> 
> Of course this authority and trust has been held for a long time with the CBAT and MPC at Harvard.  If only we could somehow get them into the VOEvent structure! Unfortunately, there are three major problems:
> 
> (1) CBAT does not distribute structured events, and brittle screen-scraping is the only way to convert them to such. But more of a problem is:
> 
> (2)The CBAT has an explicit non-distribution policy (*): "Redistribution of the circulars posted on this web site is not permitted in any form. "
> 
> (3) The CBAT is in a transition (**): "As of 2010 Feb. 1, the SAO will no longer be hosting the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) for the International Astronomical Union (IAU) because SAO has been unable to obtain sufficient funding to sustain the CBAT financially. The CBAT is working, with the support of the IAU, on a transition to a new sponsoring institution."
> 
> (*) http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/WWWPolicy.html
> (**) http://www.portaltotheuniverse.org/blogs/posts/view/43304/
> 
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