With 40 world-class collaborating institutions from 14 countries, ACME brings together the astroparticle and astronomy communities in a joint effort to forge a basis for strengthened long-term collaboration between these research infrastructures irrespective of location and level up access opportunities across Europe and beyond. The National Centre for Nuclear Research node is one of the most active partners of the ACME consortium.

On the 16th and 17th of September was held in Paris the kick-off meeting for the Astrophysics Centre for Multimessenger studies in Europe – ACME. This HORIZON-INFRA-2023-SERV-01 EU-funded project coordinated by Centre national de la recherche scientifique CNRS aims to realize an ambitious coordinated European-wide optimization of the accessibility and cohesion between multiple leading astroparticle and astronomy research infrastructures, offering access to instruments, data and expertise, focused on the new science of multi-messenger astrophysics.

Prof. Łukasz Wyrzykowski from the Astrophysics Division is co-leading the Work Package responsible for providing and homogenising access to multi-messenger and multi-wavelength archives, such as GWOSC (gravitational waves), INTEGRAL (X-rays), ANTARES (neutrinos), EVN (radio). In particular, Prof. Wyrzykowski is leading the optical time-domain global observatory, BHTOM, which provides access to a vast number of photometric archives. BHTOM is also part of ACME’s other work package and is responsible for handling multi-messenger alerts. In the ACME grant, this global observatory will be tuned to operate and react on a broad range of alerts, for example, gravitational wave optical counterparts or neutrino detections, and will provide intense optical follow-up with a network of nearly 100 telescopes. The data flow in BHTOM is fully automatised and results in science-ready data, providing a quick way for observing and studying short-lived transients. Within ACME, NCBJ staff will also work on providing access to the data from POLAR-2, a forthcoming space mission.

ACME objectives are to implement the Astroparticle Physics European Consortium’s (APPEC) and the Planning and Advisory Network for European Astronomy’s (ASTRONET) roadmaps’ recommendations and act as a pathfinder to broaden and improve access to the respective research infrastructures services and data, assess and evaluate new models for better coordination and provision of at-scale services, provide harmonized trans-national and virtual access, develop centres of expertise, improve science data products management, improve interoperable systems for rapid identification of astrophysical candidate events and alert distribution to optimize follow-up observations, provide training for a new and broader generation of scientists and engineers, open the astrophysics and astroparticle physics data sets to other disciplines and increase citizen engagement. ACME will also organize several dedicated workshops for scientists and students to provide training in the use and combination of multi-messenger data. We envisage that two of the workshops will be organized by the NCBJ and will focus on time-domain archives and follow-up of multi-messenger time-domain targets.

The ACME project coordinator Prof. Antoine Kouchner (CNRS/Université Paris Cité), and co-coordinator Paolo D’Avanzo (INAF), represent each community to ensure balance and drive cross-domain collaboration. The participation of NCBJ in the project is coordinated by Prof. Łukasz Wyrzykowski.