Lasair Team Hear From Their Users

The Lasair project has successfully demonstrated a scientifically capable prototype running in real time on the Zwicky Transient Facility stream of alerts. It has a wide user base within the UK and Europe, with teams from the ePESSTO+ Large Programme, the future SOXS instrument and the IAC in Tenerife using it for science or planning the next phase of ESO transient science.

The UK Points of Contact for transients, variable stars and AGN, Sarah Casewell (Leicester), Cosimo Inserra (Cardiff), Seb Hoenig (Southampton) organised a series of short presentations by science users who highlighted their requirements for the future development of Lasair for the LSST stream. The discussion centred around how fast and how reliable our Lasair broker needs to be and how that will influence the underlying technology. Users currently run SQL queries, and python scripts on the ZTF stream through the Lasair and Matt Nicholl and Chris Frohmaier demonstrated how this works for their science goals. Discussions focused around users receiving annotated  Kafka streams, using APIs to pull data from Lasair and running SQL/Jupyter jobs on the data with UK provided resources within Lasair. Each one has some science advantages and the Lasair development team will take this review on board as it develops the architecture for the increased volume of the LSST stream. The Lasair team thanks the participants for their valuable ideas and feedback.