Astro-COLIBRI

Definitions

• Event times: UTC (precision: 1 second)
• Time resolution for visibility assessement: 1 minute
• Coordinates: Equatorial, J2000 (precision: 0.01 deg)
• Sky map in equatorial coordinates is centered on RA=180deg
• Longitudes are negative toward West
• Image size on Pan-STARRS and SkyMapper: 0.05deg x 0.05deg

Notifications

For most streams, the notifications are sent as soon as the detection of the new transient is announced. In order to reduce the amount of information to a reasonable level, optical transients are only announced when their type is classified and announced via the Transient Name Server (TNS). This is often only done after additional (spectroscopic) observations, thus introducing a delay between the source detection and the Astro-COLIBRI notification that can range from hours to days (sometimes even weeks/months).

• GRBs : Fermi and Swift alerts (incl. names and identification)
• Neutrino : IceCube, AMON (e.g. Nu-EM coincidences), and SuperK supernova alerts
• GW : Advanced Ligo / Advanced VIRGO / KAGRA alerts (as soon as O4 starts)
• Burst : INTEGRAL and HAWC detections, FRBs, other un-categorized alerts, ...
• SNe : optical transients characterized as supernova
• OTs : optical transients not classified as SNe (e.g. novae, CVs, TDE, AGN, etc.)
• Bright OTs : optical transients (SNe and OT) with magnitudes < 18 (i.e. a subset of the two categories above)
• FLaapLUC: GeV flares from AGNs observed by Fermi-LAT and detected by the FLaapLUC pipeline
• Astro-COLIBRI announcements : News, updates and down times

Legend of observatories and event types

• Color scheme used to identify various observatories:

  



• Marker styles used to identify various types of events and sources

  



• FRB: Fast Radio Bursts
• OT: optical transients (e.g. novae, CVs, TDE, AGN, etc.)
• SN: classified supernovae
• GRB: gamma-ray bursts
• burst: unclassified transients
• neutrino: high-energy neutrino
• GW: gravitational wave
• nuem: coincidence between neutrinos and high-energy gamma rays
• 4FGL: GeV gamma-ray sources in the Fermi-LAT catalog (4FGL-DR3)
• TeVCat: TeV gamma-ray sources in the TeVCat catalog
• SGR/AXP: soft gamma-ray repeaters / anomoulus X-ray pulsars

Available archival data

• 4FGL: Fermi-LAT 4FGL-DR3
• TeVCat: TeVCat catalog (status: March 2022)
• SGR/AXP: McGill Online Magnetar Catalog + recent announcements
• GRBs : Fermi, Swift and INTEGRAL detected GRBs (since January 2016)
• GWs : all alerts emitted during O3 (2019-04-01 until 2020-03-27)
• Neutrinos : all publicly available alerts: HESE/EHE + Bronze/Gold astrotracks + Cascades (first alert: 2016-04-27)
• FRBs : all FRBs reported to TNS
• SNe + OTs: classified events reported to TNS (complete after January 2022)
• AMON Nu-EM : all HAWC-IceCube coincidences (first alert: 2020-07-17

Image credits

• We use images from the following sources:
• NASA
• DESY, Science Communication Lab
• IceCube Observatory

Version 2.3.0 (2023-03-10)

• Improved performance of the frontend
• Enabled “click and drag” of the maps in both the web and mobile frontends
• Enabled zooming of images in mobile app
• Added localisation uncertainties of archival sources (e.g. 4FGL)
• Added GBM lightcurves
• Bug fixes
• Fink cone search radius updated
• Link to AAVSO improved

Version 2.2.0 (2023-01-27)

• new VoEvent architecture (performance improvements + future proof / easier extensions + new functionalities)
• new API endpoint "event" to retrieve the Astro-COLIBRI information on an event
• improved documention of the API incl. an interactive tutorial: API documentation
• improved calculation of the observability figure (speed improvement allowing higher resolution of 1min, easier maintenance, etc.)
• new observatories: Parkes, CTA/LST
• improved notifications (identification of event updates, improved format, etc.)
• new alert stream: GRB detections by GECAM
• added IceCube event displays (if available)
• preparations of the O4 run of the gravitational wave interferometers
• Bug fixes:
  • visibility windows missing on the observability plot in some (rare) cases
  • re-enabled non-https urls on mobile devices

Version 2.1.2 (2022-12-21)

• Added VoEvent archive (XML and JSON format, accessible in the web frontend and via a new, public API endpoint 'voevent')
• New page highlighting a few use cases added to landing page: Usage examples
• Change of time range now directly affecting cone search results
• changed color for flares identified by FLaapLUC
• Bug fixes:
  • Filtering of cone search results (mobile devices)

Version 2.1.1 (2022-12-07)

• Improved creation of figures (bug fix + performance increase)
• New menu entry for contact and additional information in the mobile app
• Improved documentation of the public API endpoints
• Bug fixes:
  • Autocompletion of multiple detected sources
  • Contact email link on Android
  • Shifts in the timeline

Version 2.1.0. (2022-11-21)

• Improved performance: new cloud computing architecture + avoid recalculation of existing figures + reduced refreshes of the frontend
• Added a new alert stream: GeV flares from AGN detected by Fermi-LAT via the FLaapLUC pipeline (incl. new figures showing the latest results); see also FLaapLUC alerts
• Support for different coordinate systems (Ecliptic and Galactic) and different projections (Hammer-Aitoff, Mollweide, Mercator)
• Addition of a figure showing the Swift-XRT lightcurve for GRBs detected by Swift in the context of archival and VHE detected GRBs
• Added manual cone searches and ATEL search to the smartphone apps
• Various other improvements:
• Zoom in the latest transients map now triggers a cone search in that region
• Increased available archival transients: GRBs from Swift, Fermi and INTEGRAL since Jan/2016 + all public IceCube neutrino alerts + all public HAWC and IceCube-HAWC alerts
• Selection/deselection of all observatories or event types
• Added link to ZTF viewer ‘SNAD’ + ALeRCE + improved link to FINK
• Onboarding more interactive
• Improved API documentation

Version 2.0.2 (2022-10-07)

• Display of localisation uncertainties of all transients
• Performance improvements: building of main widget reduced + switch to Flutter 3
• Bug fix: manual cone searches

Version 2.0.1 (2022-09-16)

• Bug fix: manual cone searches

Version 2.0.0 (2022-09-01)

• Major upgrade of the web interface
• Timeline of events to visualize temporal correlations and facilitates choice of time period
• Combination of event filters and legend
• Links to external platforms shown as cards (incl. logos and short descriptions)
• Introduced “Science mode” switching between event descriptions and observability information
• Direct access to custom searches for sources in arbitrary sky locations
• Artists illustration of the different transient categories
• General improvements
• added direct links to the Living Swift-XRT Point Source catalogue
• Bug fixes
• Update of Swift alerts were not working as expected
• Various minor bug fixes and improvements

Version 1.4.2 (2022-06-10)

• Added search for ATELs
• Bug fix: event filtering in the web frontend
• Treatment of non-GRB alerts by Swift

Version 1.4.1 (2022-05-18)

• Event information improved: additional parameters displayed + link to ALADIN includes uncertainty region + link to AAVSO lightcurves + TACH/GCN viewer
• Selection of date for visibility plot possible
• New notification stream for bright (mag<18) optical transients
• Onboarding/tutorial for the mobile app
• Switch to and from the legend improved on mobile app

Version 1.4.0 (2022-03-07)

• Enabling the definition and management of custom observatories
• Updated source catalog to 4FGL-DR3 and latest TevCat
• Additional information (SNe alerts from the SuperK neutrino detector, access to SkyMapper images, new observatory locations, source redshift information, etc.)
• Various bug fixes (Horizontal scrolling of links; custom observatory locations on mobile frontends; Access to filter settings (issues for some users existed); GCN parser stability issues; etc.)

Version 1.3.0 (2022-01-10)

• Added optical transients (SNe, novae, CVs, etc.) incl. new notification streams
• Updated marker styles
• Improved search for sources (cf. manual cone search)
• Added various new links to external services: weather information, sky view, ASAS-SN, Pan-STARRS, Gaia

Version 1.2.1 (2021-11-03)

• Added a catalog of SGRs and AXPs to the cone search
• Several corner cases for the daily visibility plot fixed (e.g. darktime around noon UTC, observations covering several days)
• Transients highlighted in cone search results

Version 1.2.0 (2021-10-21)

• Merchandise shop
• Added description of transients for the general public
• Galactic plane added to sky maps
• Added direct link to the science portal of the Fink ZTF/LSST broker
• Check for existence of external links
• Removed Fermi-GBM flight notices
• Design and layouts improvements + minor bug fixes
• Mobile app: new settings menu
• Web app: re-organisation of visibility plots + display adapted to different screen sizes

Version 1.1.1 (2021-09-29)

• Fixed bug in user registration
• Setting event times to UTC

Version 1.1.0 (2021-09-21)

• Improved cone search that is flexible for future improvements
• Filter settings are now synchronized between devices

Version 1.0.0 (2021-08-17)

First public release (incl. first public Android and iOS applications)