Frameworks: Target and Observation Manager Systems for Multi-Messenger and Time Domain Science

Current and near-future U.S.-led astronomy surveys offer a revolutionary opportunity to explore physical phenomena through multiple messengers and instruments, associating gravitational wave detections with neutrino signatures and electromagnetic counterparts. The combination provides powerful new insights relevant to a broad range of research in the astrophysical and physics communities.

The scale of these surveys means that unprecedented, petabyte scale data volumes and their rapid delivery must be managed effectively to fully realize their scientific potential, but these data alone cannot fully characterize the discoveries. Additional observations from facilities with complementary instrumentation are normally required, but obtaining these in a timely manner can present serious technical challenges, both to researchers trying to identify and characterize time-sensitive targets of interest, and to the infrastructure of these facilities.

Innovative new software tools enable researchers to easily build a database to manage all aspects of their science projects, including conducting observations, through a single programmatic interface. The capabilities of these tools are expanding to ensure that they are seamlessly integrated with other, rapidly developing linchpin scientific software services, especially the range of facilities where follow-up observations are conducted.

This provides a critical link in the chain of discovery and characterization for many landmark surveys. Yet historically, such sophisticated database-driven systems have only been available to larger projects and institutions with in-house software teams. This perpetuates inequitable access to the scientific potential of major taxpayer-funded facilities.

The well-documented open source software package to be developed in this project, called the TOM (Target and Observation Manager) toolkit, and an associated community development program, will make these professional research tools accessible to everyone, including educators and citizen scientists.

Ensuring that researchers can receive information on new discoveries rapidly, manage and evaluate all relevant data on targets of interest, and conduct follow-up observations in a timely and effective manner, is essential to realizing the scientific potential of modern major astronomical surveys and missions. Petabyte-scale data products, delivered in real-time, are useful only if we can adequately handle the data rate.

Recognizing this, much effort has been invested in generating the survey data products, but the tools used by most researchers to do science investigations with these products are often an ad hoc combination of text files, spreadsheets and other applications that do not scale well and are not designed to operate with other key services. The Big Data era demands scientific project management software that interface with existing services, such as discovery alert brokers and telescopes, to enable scientists to effectively collate information relevant to their interests, and to manage all aspects of follow-up observing programs.

Modern, browser-based data exploration and visualization tools enable a diverse range of science, and well-designed public software can ensure that researchers spend time using these tools for science instead of repeatedly re-inventing them. A partnership between researchers and software engineers ensures that science can take advantage of the latest developments from industries where handling Big Data is already standard.

The TOM software package provides this critical tool set, ensures that it remains fully integrated with the evolving services in the field, and expands its capabilities to meet the needs of users. This project advances the goals of the NSF Windows on the Universe Big Idea.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.