Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
Synoptic sky surveys are opening up exciting opportunities in time domain astronomy. Gaiawill make a great contribution to this field. A crucial factor for good scientific returnsis real-time classification of transients, in order to optimize their follow-up. We havebeen developing infrastructure towards this end starting from the completed Palomar-Quest(PQ) survey, and the ongoing Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS). CRTS has beenconsistently producing transients for almost three years now. We describe here the effortsrelated to transient classification and event dissemination. Many of the technologies andmethodologies we are developing may benefit Gaia.