A major product of the nightly processing of LSST images is a world-public stream of alerts from transient, variable, and moving sources. Science users may access these alerts through third-party community brokers, which will receive the LSST alerts, add scientific value, and redistribute them to the scientific community.
We are pleased to announce the release of a new document, “Plans and Policies for LSST Alert Distribution” (LDM-612; http://ls.st/LDM-612). The document provides an overview of LSST alert production and describes the process through which community brokers will be selected.
The next step in the selection of community brokers will be a call for Letters of Intent; we expect to issue the call in the next few weeks, with a due date in late spring 2019.