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The Second VOEvent Workshop is to be held in Tucson, Dec 5-6. Registration is now underway. For more information see the workshop webpage.

VOEvent is the emerging International Virtual Observatory standard for distributing timely notifications of transient celestial events. The VOEvent specification provides a method for alerting subscribers to celestial phenomena in need of rapid, often automatic, observational follow-up. The IVOA VOEvent working group is responsible for continuing to develop the specification and for motivating the development of conforming systems, interoperable with each other and with prior community resources.

A common vision for VOEvent was forged at the first VOEvent workshop at Caltech in April 2005. The fruits of that workshop included v1.0 of the VOEvent XML specification, as well as example packets and a schema for validating those packets. Initial transport prototypes have been designed and deployed, and as a result actual event streams from such phenomena as gamma ray bursts are being captured as conforming VOEvent packets.

At the second VOEvent workshop, we hope to continue rapid progress on resolving thorny technical issues such as the proper semantics for specifying astronomical space-time coordinates or for specifying the classification of astronomical objects and processes. In addition, renewed attention will be directed to understanding the science drivers common to all time domain astronomy. VOEvent does not exist in a vacuum, and seeks to both benefit from, and provide evolutionary benefit to, prior astronomical transient event alert systems.