Astronomical Data Triage for Rapid Science Return

The quantity of astronomical observations collected by today’s instruments far exceeds the capability of manual inspection by domain experts. Rather than relying on human eyes to examine and analyze all collected data, we employ data triage algorithms shortly after data collection. Automated data triage enables increased science return by prioritizing interesting or anomalous observations for follow-up inspection, while also expediting analysis by filtering out noisy or redundant observations. We describe three specific astronomical investigations that are currently benefiting from upstream data triage techniques in their respective processing pipelines.