Success Stories: Alerts from the Night Sky

Alerts and realtime data from the night sky can tell us stories about what is happening in the universe. Scientists can then use this information to better understand the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and other unknown aspects of the universe.

Earlier this year, astronomers’ computers around the world lit up with 800,000 notifications about new asteroids in our solar system, exploding stars, and other changes in the night sky. To help, a software system from the University of Washington can process 10 terabytes of images that are produced every night. The alert pipeline was developed by a team of about two dozen researchers and software developers throughout the past decade.

Here is how this can help:

• Identify interesting astronomical events.
• Survey the sky at scale.
• Better understand the nature of the universe.

Looking to the future, the system from University of Washington is eventually expected to produce ...