VOEvent is central for gravitational wave follow-up

[Roy Williams]

As many of you know, there is great excitement in the entire astronomical community about the start of O3, the next LIGO-Virgo observing run, in early 2019 [1]. For the first time, gravitational-wave alerts will be released rapidly, to the public, for electromagnetic followup.

Perhaps less well known is that the primary mechanism for that release [2] is through VOEvent, an IVOA protocol. Let us congratulate ourselves, this is a success story for the IVOA!

Roy Williams

[1] https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/observatory-status

[2] https://emfollow.docs.ligo.org/userguide/content.html

---
Royal Observatory Edinburgh
roy at roe.ac.uk
07542 869986