gravitational waves and VOEvent

[Scott Barthelmy]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 11:08:53AM -0700, Roy Williams wrote:
> I would like to ask this group about rapid follow-up of gravitational 
> wave events, specifically what sort of information would be most useful 
> to the observer community when Notices go out in ~2015. The question is: 
> What tools might be used to establish context, decide on follow-up? DS9? 
> WWT? IRAF? What else? How can we make sure that LIGO data can be easily 
> imported into popular tools?
> 
> The observation from LIGO will not be well localized, rather a wide 
> probability map on the sky that may span several constellations -- see 
> for example (*) . It could be represented in several ways: FITS on an 
> RA/Dec grid, FITS on a Healpix grid, a set of contour lines of 
> probability, a set of 'likely galaxies', or something greatly simplified 
> from the full skymap, what? We are looking for suggestions from the 
> community about what would be the most useful such representations for 
> observers.

For the observers.....
It is my understanding that a prioritized list of patches on the sky will be generated.
Ie they/LIGO (or some middle party) will take the all-sky probability map (slide 4)
and correlate it with nearby galaxies (<30-60Mpc).  This correlation will produce ellipsoidal patches
(ra,dec_center, semi-major/minor axes lengths, and position angle) -- there will be
of order 3-6 of these patchs.  Each patch will have a probability.
Follow-up observers will start with the highest probability patch (that is visble to their location
and fits within their tiling (or not) abilities).

What do they want (will use)?  A list of prioritized patches:
1: ra,dec, size, angle, probability
2: ra,dec, size, angle, probability
3: ra,dec, size, angle, probability
4: ra,dec, size, angle, probability
5: ra,dec, size, angle, probability
...

--scott

> 
> Thank you
> Roy Williams
> LIGO Caltech
> 
> (*) slide 4 of
> http://cgwa.phys.utb.edu/gwdaw13/gwdawfiles/Presentations/GWDAW_day3/12.2%20Searle.pdf