Talk Title
From Rubin Alerts to Science: Exploring the ALeRCE Alert Broker
Description
Indian Astronomers Around the World (IAAW) is organizing an online talk on ALeRCE (Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events), an astronomical alert broker designed to process, classify, and distribute large streams of time-domain alerts.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will produce millions of alerts every night, creating major opportunities—and challenges—for time-domain astronomy. In this talk, we will explore ALeRCE and how an astronomical alert broker helps turn large alert streams into scientifically useful information.
This talk will provide an introduction to ALeRCE and its role in the Rubin Observatory era, covering how ALeRCE ingests and processes alerts, extracts useful information and builds features, uses machine learning and other tools to classify interesting transients and variable sources, and distributes alerts and derived products to the astronomical community for follow-up. We will also discuss tools available for exploring and working with the alert stream.
Speaker
Prof. Francisco Förster
Professor, Universidad de Chile
Director, Millennium Institute of Astrophysics
Bio
Prof. Francisco Förster is a Full Professor at the University of Chile and Director of the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics. His research focuses on transient astrophysics and astroinformatics, with particular interests in the early phases of supernova evolution, supernova progenitors, image processing, pattern recognition, and astronomical data analysis.
He is the principal investigator and founding director of ALeRCE (Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events), a large interdisciplinary collaboration focused on ingesting, annotating, and classifying alerts from large astronomical surveys such as the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. ALeRCE combines large-scale data processing, machine learning, and astronomical expertise to identify and classify variable and transient sources and make useful information available to the astronomical community.
Prof. Förster received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Oxford in 2009 and holds bachelor's degrees in Astronomy and Engineering Sciences from the University of Chile. He has also led the High Cadence Transient Survey (HiTS), pioneering real-time supernova discovery using DECam.
Topics to be covered
- The Vera C. Rubin Observatory alert stream and the challenges of time-domain astronomy
- The ALeRCE astronomical alert broker
- Ingesting and processing astronomical alerts
- Feature extraction and classification of alerts
- Machine learning for identifying interesting transients and variable sources
- Distributing alerts and derived products to the astronomical community
- Tools for exploring and working with astronomical alert streams
Date & Time
- Date: 21 October 2026
- Time: 6:30 PM IST (UTC +5:30)
Mode
Online (Zoom link to be shared). Please fill this form for registration.
Target Audience
- Astronomy students and researchers
- PhD students and postdoctoral researchers
- Researchers working in time-domain astronomy
- Researchers interested in astronomical alerts, transients, variable stars, machine learning, and Rubin Observatory science
Prerequisites
- Any device (preferably Laptop/Desktop) to connect online
Links/Resources
- ALeRCE
- Francisco Förster – Universidad de Chile
- Francisco Förster – IDIA, Universidad de Chile
- Millennium Institute of Astrophysics
- The ALeRCE Alert Broker paper
Event Poster
Organizers
Indian Astronomers Around the World (IAAW)