Burst & Outburst Observations Monitor (BOOM)

Began Operation: 2025

Burst & Outburst Observations Monitor (BOOM) is a community-facing data and alert infrastructure that supports time-domain and multi-messenger astronomy. BOOM provides real-time brokering, archival context, and coordination tools that enable rapid identification, vetting, and follow-up of astrophysical transients. In addition to alert distribution, BOOM has as interactive front-end designed to support astronomers interested in the filtered alert streams.

BOOM software stack powers Babamul, a multi-survey alert broker and data archive that ingests and combines alerts from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. These alerts are processed in real time to generate unified light curves, contextual metadata, and filtered event streams that can be acted on at alert times or explored retrospectively.

JSON-Serialized GCN Notices Types in GCN Kafka:

BOOM contributes a GCN Notices stream by extracting candidates from its fast transient stream (which analyzes ZTF and LSST alerts) and cross-matching them with (i) gravitational-wave alert candidates consistent with a binary neutron star merger or neutron star-black hole merger and (ii) gamma-ray bursts detected by Fermi, SVOM, and Swift. This enables rapid cross-identification of events across experiments and observatories, enhancing situational awareness and time-critical response for the broader transient astronomy community. Alert includes localization, photometry, cross-matches with other GCN Notices, and classification scores from machine-learning models. These notices are published on the GCN Kafka topic gcn.notices.boom.alert.

BOOM GCN schema and example JSON message files are available. See the Schema Browser for more information on the properties defined in the schema. Detailed description of the properties and examples of BOOM Notices are available in the GCN Schema GitHub project.