RUB Research School

1st Astro-COLIBRI multi-messenger astrophysics workshop

Developping and disseminating a research agenda on interconnecting software tools for real-time multi-messenger astronomy

The key objective of this workshop was to develop and disseminate a research agenda on interconnecting software tools for real-time multi-messenger astronomy. This international workshop provided a forum for 40 leading scientists and young researchers to foster communication within the community between developers and users with a range of expertise in the production and use of software tools that facilitate research in the rapidly evolving domain of real-time multi-messenger astronomy.

We started this journey already 2 years ago by developing Astro-COLIBRI (astro-colibri.com), a tool that aims to be the top layer connecting existing subsystems into a large ecosystem, with a focus on optimized display for users through an interactive graphical user interface and mobile apps that receive push notifications of alerts in real-time, both usable in an intuitive way. Astro-COLIBRI is already heavily used in the scientific community and among hobby astronomers. Given the role of our platform in the real-time multi-messenger community, the workshop was named “1st Astro-COLIBRI multi-messenger astrophysics workshop”.

15 invited experts from France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the USA shared the most cutting-edge research. Their presentations during the dedicated science sections over the first three days related to different aspects of Astro-COLIBRI and real-time multi-messenger astronomy in general. These insights served as input for the subsequent discussion sections. Concrete project ideas for the first Sciathon in Astrophysics were collected. The Sciathon, a science-focussed Hackathon, took part over the last two days of the workshop. It was an excellent opportunity to develop ideas to answer important questions concerning the next steps in real-time multi-messenger astrophysics raised over the first part of the workshop. Young scientists worked together in six teams with three to six participants each. The Sciathon was a lot of fun, a lot of work – and the start of great collaborations! First project results found their way already into the scientific community.

Participation contributions are accessible through our website: https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/26335/timetable/#all.detailed First project results found their way already into the scientific community: https://twitter.com/AstroColibri/status/1579446016864301058?cxt=HHwWhMDRkZfyqOsrAAAA.

We thank all partners for their generous support and wish to express our sincere gratitude to the RUB Research School for financing and supporting this event.

This conference was oranized by Patrick Reichherzer. If you have any questions about the conference, he will be happy to hear from you via e-mail.