What is "voevent"

VOEvent is a standardized language used to report observations of astronomical events; it was officially adopted in 2006 by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). Though most VOEvent messages currently issued are related to supernovae, gravitational microlensing, and gamma-ray bursts, they are intended to be general enough to describe all types of observations of astronomical events, including gravitational wave events. Messages are written in XML, providing a structured metadata description of both the observations and the inferences derived from those observations. The rapid dissemination of event data with a formalized language was the original impetus for the creation of VOEvents and the network (now called VOEventNet) used to transport the messages; indeed VOEvent messages are designed to be compact and quickly transmittable over the internet. The VOEvent language (which is codified in an XML schema) continues to evolve; the latest version is 2.0.