News

The Astro-COLIBRI team participated in the Rencontres du Ciel et de l’Espace event held at the Cité des Sciences in Paris from November 9 to 11, 2023. This event brought together astronomy enthusiasts, professionals, and amateur astronomers. At our dedicated booth, we showcased live demonstrations of the Astro-COLIBRI platform, highlighting new features and discussing the latest advancements in time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics. The booth was a hub of engaging discussions and valuable exchanges, allowing us to connect directly with the astronomy community and gather insightful feedback.

Highlights of the Event:

For more details and photos from the event, please visit our forum post: https://forum.astro-colibri.science/t/astro-colibri-at-rencontres-du-ciel-et-de-l-espace-paris-nov-9-11-2024/259/8 

🚀 The MOTS team at IRFU / CEA Paris-Saclay is proud to participate in the “Fête de la Science” at ENS Paris-Saclay, organized in collaboration with Université Paris-Saclay! We are presenting a dedicated stand to discover the fascinating world of time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics. Our team, including team members of Astro-COLIBRI, the H.E.S.S., and CTAO observatories, and supported by CEA, was showcasing cutting-edge research and technologies that explore the most energetic phenomena in the universe 💥🔭.

After an inspiring start with visits from local high-school groups, we engaged with the general public throughout the weekend. We explained how we use multiple observatories and data streams to study cosmic events in real time and how everybody can follow and even contribute to our research via the Astro-COLIBRI smartphone app and how this information is used within large observatories like H.E.S.S. and soon CTAO. But also how everybody can follow along and even participate in the quest for the most violent events in the univers.

Multi-messenger observations are the central part of the MOTS project. To optimize these challenging observations, we developed tilepy, a public software that allows to calculate complex observation plans for follow-up observations of (typically poorly localized) multi-messenger events. About one year ago (see the news below) we launched a publicly available cloud-computing infrastructure that allows to use the tilepy without the need for a local installation and integrated it into the Astro-COLIBRI interfaces. 

Now, version 2.0 of the tilepy platform has been published and a scientific paper describing the functionalities and performance of tilepy has been published by the Astrophysical Journal Supplements Series (ApJS). Check out the following links to learn more:

The Franco-Chinese space mission SVOM, dedicated particularly to the detection and study of gamma-ray burts was successfully launched on June 22, 2024, by the Chinese Long March 2C rocket from the Xichang launch base in China. Planned for a duration of at least three years, it is the result of a collaboration between the two national space agencies, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), with major contributions from the CEA and CNRS for France. 

MOTS members play a significant role in the SVOM mission, handling various aspects such as alert distribution through Astro-COLIBRI, scheduling SVOM observations for multi-messenger events, and conducting ground-based follow-up observations detected by SVOM. 

We are pleased to announce the 3rd Astro-COLIBRI multi-messenger astrophysics workshop, which will take place from September 16 to 20, 2024, at Institut Pascal at the Paris-Saclay University (France).

Building on the successful previous workshops in 2022 and 2023, we aim to develop and disseminate 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 within the community 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. 

Topics to be discussed at the workshop include:

The first two days of the workshop will consist of invited and contributed talks to discuss the current issues, challenges and opportunities in real-time multimessenger astronomy. Following these introductions, we will work together in small teams in a Hackathon-like event implementing prototypes and ideas developed during the workshop. 

We do not require a registration fee for the workshop and will cover local expenses (lunch, coffee breaks, social dinner, etc.). We have a (very limited) amount of additional funding available mainly aimed to cover accommodation expenses of early career researchers. Please let us know if you would need support during the application process. Applications are open now and will close on June 21. Places are limited and will be allocated after the deadline by the Scientific Organizing Committee. Details incl. a preliminary program are available on the indico page: https://indico.ijclab.in2p3.fr/event/10545/overview 

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 

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 

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. 

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.

Observations of transient astrophysical phenomena can now be triggered across the worldwide Unistellar network of citizen scientists via the Astro-COLIBRI platform.

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:

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. 

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 

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.