The ALeRCE broker: a community broker for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory – Francisco Förster

A new time domain ecosystem is developing thanks to a new generation of large aperture and large field of view telescopes, notably the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Among the tools required are fast machine learning aided discovery and classification algorithms, interoperable tools to allow for an effective communication with the community and follow-up telescopes, and new models and tools to extract the most physical knowledge from these observations. In this talk I will review the challenges and progress of building the Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events (ALeRCE) astronomical alert broker. ALeRCE (http://alerce.science/) is a Chilean broker that annotates, classifies and provides access to a living database of variable astronomical objects since 2019. ALeRCE is focused around three scientific cases: transients, variable stars and active galactic nuclei, and has become the 3rd group to report most transient candidates to the Transient Name Server. I will also discuss some of the challenges we are facing in preparation for Vera C. Rubin, months before the start of operations.