Alert Infrastructure

NASA's network for the rapid distribution of alerts about transient events — gamma-ray bursts, gravitational-wave triggers, and neutrino detections — so that telescopes around the world can slew to a fresh event within seconds.

The torrent of alerts the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will issue — millions per night — as it scans the whole southern sky every few nights, feeding community brokers that filter the deluge into the events worth chasing.

A short-notice publication service for rapidly announcing and commenting on new astronomical observations, widely used to share follow-up of transients within hours.

The official IAU registry that assigns the discovery names of supernovae and other transients, and collects the reports and classifications that establish who found what, and when.

The Virtual Observatory's standard machine-readable format for reporting a transient celestial event — what, where, when, and how confident — so that alerts flow automatically between observatories, brokers, and robotic telescopes.