Division B WG Time Domain Astronomy

Description

The IAU Working Group on Time Domain Astronomy promotes the study of variability - transient, periodic, secular, or aperiodic - across all disciplines of astronomy from the solar system to cosmological distances. In keeping with the broad scope of activities, WG members represent a diversity of topics including synoptic surveys in all bandpasses, multi-messenger follow-up, stellar variability, moving objects, heritage data, instrumentation, robotic telescopes, communication, analysis, and education. Thus we provide a forum to bring together specialists who may not interact very frequently, if at all, providing a basis for exploring commonality in data analysis tools, simulations, standards, observing strategies, transient alert infrastructure, telescope scheduling, etc. We support meetings such as the ongoing workshop series, “Hot-wiring the Transient Universe”, and are proposing a time domain symposium for 2017, “Southern Horizons in Time Domain Astronomy”. As a Working Group reporting to IAU Division B, our explicit scope is "Facilities, Technologies and Data Science”, but we are eager to work with other divisions and commissions of the Union on diverse issues of time domain science of all kinds.