ANTARES: A Prototype Transient Broker System

Abstract

The Arizona-NOAO Temporal Analysis and Response to Events System (ANTARES)
is a joint project of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and the
Department of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. The goal is to
build the software infrastructure necessary to process and filter alerts
produced by time-domain surveys, with the ultimate source of such alerts
being the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). ANTARES will add value to
alerts by annotating them with information from external sources such as
previous surveys from across the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition, the
temporal history of annotated alerts will provide further annotation for
analysis. These alerts will go through a cascade of filters to select
interesting candidates. For the prototype, 'interesting' is defined as the
rarest or most unusual alert, but future systems will accommodate multiple
filtering goals. The system is designed to be flexible, allowing users to
access the stream at multiple points throughout the process, and to insert
custom filters where necessary. We will describe the basic architecture of
ANTARES and the principles that will guide development and implementation.