Which broker for real time streaming ZTF alerts

Support
#1

Dears,

I am working on building a real time map of multimessenger-relevant transients.
I’d like to stream in real time relevant alerts from ZTF, and in the future from LSST.
My usecase is this:

  1. I wait for real-time alerts from high-energy spaceborne instruments (e.g. Fermi-GBM) and gravitational interferometers . I can stream these (with Kafka) in the form of GCN notice.
  2. Upon a gravitational or high-energy trigger, I want to start streaming alerts from ZTF within a cone region of the sky (few degrees radius). It would be nice to have ZTF alerts filtered out of events with likely SS or galactic sources.

I am having trouble identifying a ZTF broker I can use to accomplish point 2.
I tried with ANTARES and got in touch with their team but my usecase seems to not be feasible at this time.
I am now experimenting with Fink but for some reason I can’t get alerts from them (to date i only experimented with their CLI tools though).

Is anyone else working with a similiar usecase? If so, what broker are you using for streaming ZTF alerts in realtime?

Thank you a lot,
Peppe

#2

Hi Peppe,
Thanks for the questions (and thanks for reaching out to ANTARES!). So we’re currently working on guidance for how to choose the right alert broker for your needs. Currently, we have the Alerts & Brokers page.

Since you are experimenting with Fink, perhaps you can reach out to them to ask them directly? ( contact@fink-broker.org) – they are a great team and I think they should get back to you quickly, you might also ask them if they know of anyone else who are exploring similar use cases for their broker.

Best,
Ryan

#3

Hello Ryan! Thank you very much for your help and useful references. I just wanted to add to my previous message that in the meanwhile I got in touch with the Fink team, and after some crosscheck, I was able to effectively stream their alerts from a few useful topics.

Bests,
Peppe

#4

Great to hear, thanks for the update Peppe!