M4OPT: Multi-Mission Multi-Messenger Observation Planning Toolkit#

Visualization of an example observing plan generated by |M4OPT| for the UVEX mission

Visualization of an example observing plan generated by M4OPT for the UVEX mission.#

M4OPT is an open-source toolkit for multi-facility scheduling of astrophysics observing campaigns. It focuses on extremely rapid follow-up of gravitational wave (GW) and neutrino events with heterogeneous networks of space and ground-based observatories.

M4OPT uses the versatile mathematical framework of mixed integer programming to model and solve complex observation scheduling problems. Although M4OPT is open source, for the largest problems it can leverage two industrial-strength commercial MIP solvers: CPLEX or Gurobi. Both solvers are available for free for academic users.

M4OPT is designed from the Astropy affiliated package template, and is meant to follow those standards, including interoperability with the Astropy ecosystem. It also complies with NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) 7150 for Class C software and is suitable for non-safety-critical ground software applications for Class D NASA payloads.

How to Cite#

If you use M4OPT in your research, then please cite the following paper:

Singer, L. P., Criswell, A. W., Leggio, S. C., et al. Optimal Follow-up of Gravitational-wave Events with the UltraViolet EXplorer (UVEX). Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 137(7):074501, July 2025. https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/adcfc6.

Table of Contents#

Index#