ATELstream

The Astronomer’s Telegram is about encouraging more, and better, observations of astrophysical transients.  With that in mind, we’ve introduced ATELstream.

ATELstream is a socket-level XML-object distribution server.  It permits world-wide, confirmed distribution in less than 1 second.

The design principles of ATELstream are:

• Speed. Distributed XML objects should be received worldwide as quickly as possible, with a target receipt time of 1 second after the XML object is received from the submitter by the main node.
• Instantaneous and anonymous access to receive the stream. Users need not identify themselves in advance to receive the stream.  Simply start-up a server which connects to the main node, and you will begin to receive the stream.  You may download a perl-based server here and be receiving the stream in 2 minutes, or write one based on the described ATELstream protocol.

ATELstream is an active server operating with a published protocol.  Clients  submit an XML object.  The main node (at astronomerstelegram.org) redistributes the XML object to all connected servers.

This permits hard-coding of distributing data via ATELstream into telescope  operations — the instant an automated analysis discovers an anomaly, you it may connect to ATELstream, authenticate, and submit it.  This also permits hard-coding of telescope response to the ATELstream — a telescope daemon can listen to the stream for a certain type of XML object, and when it is received, respond to it autonomously.