Astro-COLIBRI 2—An Advanced Platform for Real-Time Multi-Messenger Discoveries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well written paper with very relevant information. I recommend publication. I have some suggestions and minor comments for improvement:

Abstract

I'd recommend to rephrase the sentence in line 3. The word "patchwork" gives the wrong impression. As it's defined in the paper, I'd say "Astro-COLIBRI is a meta-platform that integrates specific tools... " 

Line 7 and 8, to avoid "using ... examples of [the] usage" I'd say "with documented examples"

Introduction

line 17. Instead of "active galactic nuclei" I'd say "flares of active galactic nuclei"

Figure 1. I don't know how useful/informative this is because I can't really see anything for XRT, BAT, and GBM (after RodoBA). I understand that it's taken from another paper, but it's from one of the authors.

line 42. GCN is mentioned here for the first time but actually defined only in lines 77-78. It should be spelled out here instead.

The last paragraph uses a mixture of active and passive voice. I prefer consistency. "We start in Section 2", "... are discussed in Section 4", and "Section 5 describes... " This last one is worse because either the authors describe, of something is described in Section 5.

Section 2

For consistency in the title I'd add a dash in meta-platform.

The structure of this section is confusing. The section is supposed to describe the platform. The main subsections are Alert pipeline and Science drivers. How are the astrophysical sources "part of" the platform? Then, there's a section on pipeline and a subsection on streams, but it's not clear what's the difference between "pipelines" and "streams". There is no actual definition of streams in section 2.1.1., which I think could help readers not very familiar with the field. Section 2.1.1. then talks about events and in line 76 about "pipeline" explicitly. Finally, in line 86 they say "pipelines and streams". So it's not clear if they're different or not. I think that Section 2 would benefit from clear definitions of the different components of the platform. Finally subsection 2.1.2 is "event information" but it's not clear where "events" fall within streams and pipelines.

Figure 2. The caption starts with "1 and 2." which I don't know what it refers to.

Section 2.1.1

line 82-83. "GCN circulars ... make up only a tiny fraction," I'd prefer to have a number instead of saying it's tiny. Then, I'd say a fraction of the total what. 

Section 2.1.2

The first sentence says that the different transients, messengers and telescopes created the ecosystem of services. This is not right. It should say that an ecosystem of services was created because of the different transients, etc.

line 92. "Table 2 summarizes" -> "We summarize... in Table 2."

Section 2.2

Besides the fact that I mentioned before that I don't think that astrophysical sources of transient events should be under the components of the platform, for consistency under AGN: I'd explicitly say "There are different subclasses of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)".

Caption of Figure 4. I'd say "SNe" instead of "SN" for consistency with the text. Also a suggestion "TNS from different telescopes or brokers." instead of "of".

Also for consistency, I'd add (FRBs) after Fast Radio Bursts in line 120.

line 132. "GWs detections" -> "GW detections"

line 140. Authors say that they show "known sources." I think it'd be better to be more explicit about what they show. Is it known sources of GW? Known gamma-ray sources? Is it AGNs? All galaxies? etc, etc.

line 141. I'm not sure what the authors are trying to convey in the first sentence. Neutrinos are not equipped with their own set of physics. (Not sure what a set of physics really means.) 

line 167. What's the definition of "filter" in this context? 

Section 3

There's a typo in "following" in line 172

Section 3.3

Authors say that they will fix the lack of recent ATels, but this is due to a delay at NASA; ie. external to this platform. So it's not clear how this will be resolved. I think that it'd be important to describe what the proposed solution  is.

Author Response

Please find our reply in the attached pdf.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Submitted paper provides an extended description of Astro-COLIBRI, an important service for transient astrophysics both for professional and amateur astronomers. The paper is almost ready for acceptance, however I would recommend to try few improvements which may increase the readability:

* There are enormous number of acronyms, I suggest to add somewhere table with their description (not removing descriptions from the main text). For example, VOEVent is not expanded. Whether -COLIBRI is still acronym? If yes, please expand it as well.

* The paper has a lot of plots and screenshots, which sometimes break enumerated lists. Can you try to rearrange them? For example, you can try to put Tab.1 and Fig.3 on the same page. This can by tried also for Fig.4 and Fig.5.

* It would be helpful to have a comparison chart between Astro-COLIBRI and most advanced brokers/transient systems, e.g. TNS, AMPEL, 4PiSky, etc. Authors can compare, e.g. observatories, science drivers, API, real-time analysis features, GUI, notifications, long-term archives, etc. This chart would also help newcomers in the field to navigate through the diversity of different tools.

* The authors did not mention licensing of software and possibility of third-party contributions (e.g. via plugin system), could you please add statement on this?

* In minor comments I provided few examples regarding improving the style and spelling of some sentences. If possible I would suggest you to ask somebody to have a fresh look into text, which could further improve it in terms of wording/phrasing.

Minor comments:

L14-18: phrase "real-time multi-messenger observations have contributed significantly" repeats in neighboring sentences, please consider rewriting this part.

Are the authors confident with the usage of the term "meta platform"? I think that the "platform" should be enough.

Caption of Figure 2. What does phrase "1 and 2." stand for?

Section 2.2. Science drivers: Here authors speak about "various classes of astrophysical sources", however in the following list authors mention GW and neutrinos, which are messengers themselves, not astrophysical sources. I think that wording in this section should be revisited.

Section 3. I suggest to use standard caption like "New feature ..." instead of "Novel functionalities ..."

Please correct URL https://astro-colibri.science/documentationg (page not found) in footnote (p.9)

L189: anomoulus -> anomalous

URL https://twitter.com/Stef_Astro/status/1527329085973995521?cxt=HHwWgoDRicXtlLIqAAAA in footnote of p.12 does not work (page not found).

L346: "Fink" is written with small letters (not like when it was defined first time as "FINK")

Author Response

Please find our reply in the attached pdf.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf