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Galaxies
Special Issues
The New Era of Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astronomy
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The New Era of Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astronomy

A special issue of Galaxies (ISSN 2075-4434).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2023) | Viewed by 6836

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Fabian Schüssler

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
IRFU / CEA Paris-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Interests: multi-messenger transients
Prof. Dr. Anna Franckowiak

E-Mail Website
Assistant Guest Editor
Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany
Interests: multi-messenger astronomy; neutrinos; gamma rays; supernovae; blazars; tidal disruption events
Dr. Marcos Santander

E-Mail Website
Assistant Guest Editor
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
Interests: multi-messenger astronomy; high-energy neutrinos; very high-energy gamma rays

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In August 2017, the LIGO/VIRGO scientific collaboration discovered a gravitational wave signal from the neutron star merger GW170817. The detection of the associated electromagnetic emission (GRB170817A, AT 2017gfo) is now considered the beginning of the new era of multi-messenger astronomy. Only a few weeks after that first breakthrough, the IceCube neutrino observatory detected a high-energy neutrino (IceCube-170922A) and follow-up observations across the electromagnetic spectrum led to the identification of the flaring gamma-ray blazar TXS 0506+056 within its uncertainty region. These first observational results have triggered a flurry of theoretical and experimental efforts over recent years. Significant progress in many areas has allowed us to start simultaneous observation campaigns, including all the known cosmic messengers, from the radio to the very high-energy gamma-ray domain, cosmic rays, neutrinos and gravitational waves. Novel methods, which are becoming more and more reliant on machine learning techniques, to analyze data streams in real-time allow us to alert the worldwide community in real-time. Follow-up techniques and observatory schedules have been optimized for prompt follow-ups and subsequent data analyses and interpretations naturally take into account the wealth of the gathered information.

This Special Issue focuses on the progress of real-time multi-messenger astronomy over recent years and the outlook and preparation of the next decade. It will highlight recent observational results and progress in the theoretical understanding of the most violent phenomena in the universe. Complementary topics range from real-time data analyses and alert distribution techniques to novel scheduling and analysis procedures. The Special Issue will thus provide an overview and state-of-the-art description of the most important building block of the exciting field of real-time multi-messenger astronomy. 

Dr. Fabian Schüssler
Prof. Dr. Anna Franckowiak
Dr. Marcos Santander
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Galaxies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • multi-messenger
  • transients
  • gravitational waves
  • high-energy neutrinos
  • gamma-ray bursts
  • optical transients

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

10 pages, 7483 KiB  
Article
Searching for Short-Timescale Transients in Gamma-ray Telescope Data
by Annanay Jaitly, Dmitriy Kostunin and Karin Cescon
Galaxies 2023, 11(4), 88; https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies11040088 - 24 Jul 2023
Viewed by 827
Abstract
Astrophysical sources show variability in their emissions over a range of timescales, with transients such as fast radio bursts (FRBs) and magnetar giant flares (MGFs) showing variability on timescales as short as a few milliseconds. Recent advances in gamma-ray astronomy such as telescopes’ [...] Read more.
Astrophysical sources show variability in their emissions over a range of timescales, with transients such as fast radio bursts (FRBs) and magnetar giant flares (MGFs) showing variability on timescales as short as a few milliseconds. Recent advances in gamma-ray astronomy such as telescopes’ high temporal resolution and relatively high uptime, combined with follow-up programs between different facilities, should allow serendipitous observations of burst-like phenomena. Even so, no very-high-energy gamma-ray counterparts for FRBs have been detected so far, and there is a general lack of software tools suited to search for such phenomena. We present a tool capable of searching gamma-ray telescope data for transient phenomena over arbitrary timescales—it is based on the Gammapy package and recursively scans the given field of view for clusters of events within user-defined time and angular-separation intervals. The generalized implementation allows for its application in many other cases and multiple gamma-ray telescopes. The main features and methodology of the developed tool are presented here, along with an analysis of the open gamma ray telescope data performed using it. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The New Era of Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astronomy)
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16 pages, 433 KiB  
Article
Language Models for Multimessenger Astronomy
by Vladimir Sotnikov and Anastasiia Chaikova
Galaxies 2023, 11(3), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies11030063 - 01 May 2023
Viewed by 2565
Abstract
With the increasing reliance of astronomy on multi-instrument and multi-messenger observations for detecting transient phenomena, communication among astronomers has become more critical. Apart from automatic prompt follow-up observations, short reports, e.g., GCN circulars and ATels, provide essential human-written interpretations and discussions of observations. [...] Read more.
With the increasing reliance of astronomy on multi-instrument and multi-messenger observations for detecting transient phenomena, communication among astronomers has become more critical. Apart from automatic prompt follow-up observations, short reports, e.g., GCN circulars and ATels, provide essential human-written interpretations and discussions of observations. These reports lack a defined format, unlike machine-readable messages, making it challenging to associate phenomena with specific objects or coordinates in the sky. This paper examines the use of large language models (LLMs)—machine learning models with billions of trainable parameters or more that are trained on text—such as InstructGPT-3 and open-source Flan-T5-XXL for extracting information from astronomical reports. The study investigates the zero-shot and few-shot learning capabilities of LLMs and demonstrates various techniques to improve the accuracy of predictions. The study shows the importance of careful prompt engineering while working with LLMs, as demonstrated through edge case examples. The study’s findings have significant implications for the development of data-driven applications for astrophysical text analysis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The New Era of Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astronomy)
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18 pages, 7296 KiB  
Article
Astro-COLIBRI 2—An Advanced Platform for Real-Time Multi-Messenger Discoveries
by Patrick Reichherzer, Fabian Schüssler, Valentin Lefranc, Julia Becker Tjus, Jayson Mourier and Atilla Kaan Alkan
Galaxies 2023, 11(1), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies11010022 - 28 Jan 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2752
Abstract
The study of flaring astrophysical events in the multi-messenger approach requires instantaneous follow-up observations to better understand the nature of these events through complementary observational data. We present Astro-COLIBRI as a platform that integrates specific tools in the real-time multi-messenger ecosystem. The Astro-COLIBRI [...] Read more.
The study of flaring astrophysical events in the multi-messenger approach requires instantaneous follow-up observations to better understand the nature of these events through complementary observational data. We present Astro-COLIBRI as a platform that integrates specific tools in the real-time multi-messenger ecosystem. The Astro-COLIBRI platform bundles and evaluates alerts about transients from various channels. It further automates the coordination of follow-up observations by providing and linking detailed information through its comprehensible graphical user interface. We present the functionalities with documented examples of Astro-COLIBRI usage through the community since its public release in August 2021. We highlight the use cases of Astro-COLIBRI for planning follow-up observations by professional and amateur astronomers, as well as checking predictions from theoretical models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The New Era of Real-Time Multi-Messenger Astronomy)
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