new topic: time domain bestiary

[Rob Seaman]

A variety of purposes related to the evolving nature of astronomy in general and my employer in particular.  The InterOp is coming up and those going will be discussing (from a recent message from the TDIG jefe):

	- SimpleTimeSeries (Matthew)
	- VOEventRegExt (Matthew)
	- VOEvent Transport Protocol (John)
	- VOEventContainer

These protocols/standards are in support of a mission to carry out diverse programs of astronomical time domain science investigations.  IVOA Recommendations are themselves purely philosophical until they are instantiated in systems deployed around the astronomical community.  Systems that themselves are of mostly philosophical interest unless they are organized into a larger interoperating system of systems developed, operated and maintained with enough support to keep them in the field.

The resulting science may also be said to be purely philosophical, whatever that says about the techniques, infrastructure and logistics of the practice of astronomy, time domain or otherwise.

Rob
--

On Apr 28, 2014, at 3:12 PM, Matthew Graham <mjg at cacr.caltech.edu> wrote:

> Is there a purpose to this discussion or is it purely philosophical?
> 
> -- M.
> 
> On Apr 28, 2014, at 3:10 PM, Rob Seaman wrote:
> 
>> …or put it this way: on slide 5 of Steve Ridgway’s talk on the variable sky at HTU III, bullet 1 says “bottom up approach not satisfactory”.  This can be taken in several ways, but one issue is that the list of transient/variable phenomena is incomplete.  Some things are so rare we’ve never seen them, or our imagination does not yet extend to those classes of objects.  The unknown unknowns.
>> 
>> The literature contains a long list of knowns, however, of various classes.  Whether it’s top-down, bottom-up or sideways, one way to hedge in the parameter space of Cosmos Incognita, is to consider the characteristics of those classes.  This applies to the various aspects of classification, but also to the workflow logistics of the transient follow-up (whatever we call that).  The architecture of the larger system to respond to alerts (once characterized, classified, prioritized, etc) depends on a sweet spot(s) of phenomenological features shared by very diverse astrophysical phenomena.
>> 
>> What’s our best guess of where the sweet spot lies?  What kind of system is needed to be responsive to this?  Trying mightily to resist quoting Rumsfeld, but maybe there’s no other way.  If we have to go to war with the army (or telescopes/instruments) we have, how does that affect the strategic choice of science to pursue now, and of facilities to plan to build later?
>> 
>> Rob
>> —
>> 
>> On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:09 PM, Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> There are additional classes such as microlensing and moving objects.  Variability can be pulsations or eclipses, etc and so forth.  So is there a complete-ish list of the different classes?
>>> --
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:05 PM, Matthew Graham <mjg at cacr.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> I think you need to distinguish between things that vary (basically everything at some level) or things that are eruptive or explosive in some fashion. Which do you want to catalog?
>>>> 
>>>> 	Cheers,
>>>> 
>>>> 	Matthew
>>>> 
>>>> On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:00 PM, Rob Seaman wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> So at the first VOEvent meeting we spent some time scribbling down a time domain bestiary - a list of different astrophysical phenomena that vary.
>>>>> 
>>>>> What is the best version of this now?  Is there a review article(s), for instance, that includes a full or partial list of different classes of things that go bump in the night?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Rob
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>