ANTARES: Hunting the "rarest of the rare" in the time-domain
Abstract
Current and future wide-field surveys provide us with petabytes of images, and an unparalleled window into the time-domain. Identifying, filtering, characterizing, and following up even known classes of variable and transient sources in this data stream pose an unprecedented challenge. However, the most interesting objects are those that we have never seen before. I’ll discuss our work on the Arizona-NOAO Temporal Analysis and Response to Events System. ANTARES is a joint project of the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Arizona, and we are using our experience with synoptic surveys and big data to tackle the general problem of characterizing the entire transient and variable sky. Our prototype is focused on identifying the “rarest of the the rare” events in real-time, from "multi-messenger" data streams. In order to coordinate detailed follow-up studies with facilities spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum, we must accurately characterize known objects with sparse data to separate the wheat from the chaff. I’ll detail some of the new algorithms being developed for the project, the more complex architecture we need to accomplish this more ambitious goal, and present some of our preliminary results using existing data sets.
- Publication:
-
IAU General Assembly
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015IAUGA..2258269N