frb-voe: A Real-time Virtual Observatory Event Alert Service for Fast Radio Bursts
Abstract
We present frb-voe, a publicly available software package that enables radio observatories to broadcast fast radio burst (FRB) alerts to subscribers through low-latency virtual observatory events (VOEvents). We describe a use-case of frb-voe by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst (CHIME/FRB) Collaboration, which has broadcast thousands of FRB alerts to subscribers worldwide. Using this service, observers have daily opportunities to conduct rapid multi-wavelength follow-up observations of new FRB sources. Alerts are distributed as machine-readable reports and as emails containing FRB metadata, and are available to the public within approximately 13 seconds of detection. A sortable database and a downloadable JSON file containing FRB metadata from all broadcast alerts can be found on the CHIME/FRB public webpage. The frb-voe service also provides users with the ability to retrieve FRB names from the Transient Name Server (TNS) through the frb-voe client user interface (CLI). The frb-voe service can act as a foundation on which any observatory that detects FRBs can build its own VOEvent broadcasting service to contribute to the coordinated multi-wavelength follow-up of astrophysical transients.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2410.22468,
title = {frb-voe: A Real-time Virtual Observatory Event Alert Service for Fast Radio Bursts},
author = {Thomas C. Abbott and Andrew V. Zwaniga and Charanjot Brar and Victoria M. Kaspi and Emily Petroff and Mohit Bhardwaj and P. J. Boyle and Amanda M. Cook and Ronny C. Joseph and Kiyoshi W. Masui and Ayush Pandhi and Ziggy Pleunis and Paul Scholz and Kaitlyn Shin and Shriharsh Tendulkar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.22468},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Submitted to The Astronomical Journal