News
April, 2024: New postdoc position in MOTS
The Gravitatiobal Wave group at IJCLab if hiring a postdoc for 2 years to work on multi-messenger physics and how to prepare observation plans between different observatories. More details are available at https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR9012-SOPHEB-060/Default.aspx?lang=EN
March, 2024: New partners for Astro-COLIBRI! The Astro-COLIBRI platform is now partnering with two extensive networks of optical telescopes. The RAPAS network is an initiative of mainly french professional and amateur astronomers aiming at follow-up observations of transient phenomena. The BHTOM network is a network of almost 100 telescopes all around the globe. Thanks to these new partners, it is now possible to request dedicated follow-up observations of an event from within Astro-COLIBRI with a single click of a button. Time domain astronomy has never been easier!
Feburary, 2024: MOTS is hiring!
The High-Energy Astroparticle Physics group of the Particle Physics Department of IRFU / CEA Paris-Saclay is inviting applications for a Postdoctoral Research Position, set for two years with the possibility of extension. The position is focused on multi-messenger studies in the context of the Astro-COLIBRI platform. Details: https://www.multimessenger-astronomy.com/team--open-positions.html
Another position is open for computer science students ("alternance"): details here
January, 2024: Chat with Astro-COLIBRI! The number of transient phenomena is ever increasing. To keep track of the most interesting events, the Astro-COLIBRI team is launching two, fundamentally new ways of interaction with the platform, its developers and with the global community:
an OpenAI GPT chatbot dedicated to transient astrophysical phenomena: Astro-COLIBRI GPT
an open discussion forum: https://forum.astro-colibri.science
Janurary, 2024: The second meeting of the Fink Collaboration took place in early January at the IJCLab, Orsay. This three-day event was an opportunity to present recent scientific and technical results from Fink members, organize hands-on sessions and reflect on the future direction of the project. All presentations and documents can be accessed online at: https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/30789
November 29, 2023: We are proud to announce that the Fink alert broker (https://fink-broker.org) has been awarded the open science prize for Free Software in research 2023 by the French Ministry of Research!
The award recognizes projects and research teams working to develop and disseminate free software, contributing to the construction of a crucial common good, and recognizing the production of free software as a contribution and a result of research. Free software under the Apache 2.0 license from the outset, Fink has continued to promote the values of free software as a solution to the technical challenges encountered in astronomy, as a necessary means for open science, and as a strong vector for scientific success. As part of the Platforms work package in MOTS, this approach proved efficient for example to keep simple the interoperability between Fink and the different actors, seamlessly integrating and deploying state-of-the-art scientific software to process and distribute openly astronomical alerts within the community.
More information on the laureates (in French): https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr/remise-des-prix-science-ouverte-du-logiciel-libre-de-la-recherche-2023-93732
November 20-24, 2023: The 2nd Astro-COLIBRI Multimessenger astrophysics workshop was held at the Institut Pascal at the Paris-Saclay university. Led by the Astro-COLIBRI team, more than 40 participants from 14 countries all around the world followed presentations by world-leading experts in the field of time domain and multi-messenger astrophysics. They then split into 6 different group for a Sciathon/Hackathon. Each group worked on ideas for further improvements to our platform and transient astrophysics. The ideas, prototypes and first use-cases were then presented in a final session to all participants. The Astro-COLIBRI team is now taking over and will release them in the coming weeks and months. Details of the workshop (incl. the presentations) are available here:
https://indico.ijclab.in2p3.fr/event/9549/
Motivated by the enthusiastic feedback from all participants, we are already planning ahead for the 3rd edition. It will take place September 16-20, 2024 at Insitut Pascal: https://astrophysics-workshop-3rd.web.app
October 15, 2023: Astro-COLIBRI participates in the Pro-Am efforts of the International Astronomical Union
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) formed a new working group for professional-amateur relations in astronomy (for short, the Pro-Am WG) under its Executive Committee in 2021. The WG has the goal of promoting research collaborations, delivering workshops, and promoting and facilitating the integration of professional astronomers within amateur societies. A central initiative is the IAU Pro-Am Research Collaboration (PARC) that promotes and facilitates professional-amateur research collaborations in astronomy. A list of Pro-Am projects participating in this effort has now been published on the website of the WG. Continuing and extending our collaborations with amateur astronomers, Astro-COLIBRI is actively participating in this new global effort.
August 24, 2023: SETI Institute & Unistellar collaborate with Astro-COLIBRI to observe cataclysmic events
Time domain astronomy is not limited to huge telescopes and professional astronomers. Everybody can participate in citizen science projects! To facilitate observations of transient phenomena we set up a collaboration between Astro-COLIBRI and the Unistellar citizen science program on "cosmic cataclysms". Astro-COLIBRI now distributes alerts on interesting cosmic events detected by the ZTF observatory and that are accessible by the digital Unistellar telescopes. A dedicated link in the Astro-COLIBRI app allows to start immediate follow-up observations with the Unistellar eVscope or eQuinox telescopes. All crucial parameters will be set automatically. Data analysis and subsequent publications are handled in collaboration with the SETI Institute. See the official announcement for details.
July 26 - August 3, 2023: 38th ICRC, the Astroparticle Physics Conference
ICRC ("International Cosmic Ray Conference") is the largest conference on astroparticle physics. This year it will bring together 1100+ participants in Nagoya, Japan. MOTS members are leading the following contributions and are presenting many others as co-authors:
The Very-High-Energy electron spectrum observed with H.E.S.S. (M. de Naurois et al.)
Probing VHE gamma-ray emission from GW events with H.E.S.S. (H. Ashkar et al.)
All sky archival search for FRB high energy counterparts with Swift and Fermi (H. Ashkar et al.)
Why no VHE GRBs where detected before 2018? (H. Ashkar et al.)
Joint searches by FACT, H.E.S.S., MAGIC and VERITAS for VHE gamma-ray emission associated with neutrinos detected by IceCube (F. Schüssler et al.)
tilepy: rapid tiling strategies in mid/small FoV observatories (F. Schüssler et al.)
Astro-COLIBRI: An Advanced Platform for Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (F. Schüssler et al.)
June 25, 2023: Public release of the tilepy API and integration in Astro-COLIBRI
Within the MOTS project, the Astro-COLIBRI team joined forces with the developers of "tilepy". The latter allows to calculate optimized follow-up schedules of multi-messenger events. Initally built for high-energy gamma-ray instruments, it is suited for telescopes of all sizes/FoV/locations/etc.
Developed since a few years at IRFU / CEA Paris-Saclay, the MOTS participants at IRFU, LLR and external partners at IFAE/Barcelona were now ready to make the source code of tilepy public: https://github.com/astro-transients/tilepy Note: this is a very early release, a lot of things are still in a sub-optimal state, documentation is largely missing, etc. => work in progress, MOTS is only starting!
Even better: the Astro-COLIBRI team set up a cloud-based computing cluster and a public API at https://tilepy.com. You can thus calculate follow-up schedules even without the need to install tilepy locally on your machine(s). Documentation is available at https://tilepy.com/apidoc
Still better: the tilepy API has been deeply integreate into the Astro-COLIBRI platform. You can thus visualize the follow-up schedules directly on you phone (Android and iOS) and on the web. In the example shown on the right, the observation plan is indicated by the yellow triangles.
June 13, 2023: Announcement of the 2nd Astro-COLIBRI multi-messenger workshop
We are pleased to announce the 2nd Astro-COLIBRI multi-messenger astrophysics workshop that will take place from November 20 to November 24, 2023, at Institut Pascal at the Paris-Saclay University (France).
Building on the successful first workshop last year, we aim to discuss and develop a research agenda on interconnecting software tools for real-time multi-messenger astronomy. This international workshop provides a forum for leading scientists and young researchers to foster communication between developers and users with a wide range of expertise in the production and use of software tools that facilitate life in the rapidly evolving field of real-time multi-messenger astronomy.
The first two days of the workshop will consist of invited and contributed talks to discuss the current hot topics, challenges, and opportunities in real-time multimessenger astronomy. Starting Wednesday, we will work together in small teams in a Hackathon-like event (“Sciathon”) prototyping and implementing new ideas developed during the workshop.
Participation is free of charge but the number of available places is limited. Application for participation is possible until August 31. The selected participants will be announced shortly after that. See details on the agenda on our website, where you can also register for the event: https://astrophysics-workshop-2nd.web.app
March 21, 2023: H.E.S.S. observations of the BOAT ("Brightest Of All Times"), GRB 221009A, were led by MOTS members H. Ashkar (LLR) and F. Schussler (IRFU). Observations were difficult due to the full moon, clouds and a high aerosol content of the atmosphere above the observatory in Namibia. H.E.S.S. did not detect very-high-energy gamma-rays but we managed to derive interesting upper limits on the flux across a wide time range. They will be crucial for our understanding of this extraordinary event. The paper has been accepted for publication in ApJLetters (signed by the mentioned MOTS members as corresponding authors) and is available on the arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10558 and on HAL.
Project start: January 2023
The project has been funded by the french "Agency Nationale de Recherche" (ANR)! It started officially in January 2023 and runs over 4 years.
You'll find an overview of the project here.