Requirements from astronomy in the Virtual Observatory era

1. Requirements from astronomy in the Virtual Observatory era Bob Mann Institute for Astronomy & NeSC University of Edinburgh

2. Outline of talk • What is the Virtual Observatory (VObs)? • How is it changing astronomy? • Who in astronomy needs e-Science skills? • Data centre staff • VObs middleware developers • Data analysis tool developers • Research astronomers • Summary • What skills are needed? • How can these requirements be met?

3. What is the Virtual Observatory? • A goal: • An interoperable federation of the world’s astronomical data sources • A standards agency/coordination body: • International Virtual Observatory Alliance • Its members are VObs projects in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, UK, USA, and the EU.

4. ROSAT ~keV DSS Optical IRAS 25m 2MASS 2m GB 6cm WENSS 92cm NVSS 20cm IRAS 100m Why is the VObs needed? • We observe across the whole electromagnetic spectrum • Different views of a local spiral galaxy • Need all of them to understand its physics fully • The databases holding them are located all over the world

5. Schematic of the VObs DB 2 DB 3 DB 4 DB 5 DB 1 Compute Resource 1 App 1 Registry App 3 App 2 Workflow Compute Resource 2 App 4 User Portal App 5

6. What services will the Virtual Observatory need? • Data discovery • Looking up metadata in a registry • Data access • With/without authentication & authorization • Data integration • Cross-matching entries in databases • Data manipulation • Data mining, data analysis, etc

7. Data centre staff DB 2 DB 3 DB 4 DB 5 DB 1 Compute Resource 1 App 1 • Data Curation: • Provenance, DBMS design and operations • Data Access • Security, Registry Metadata, Web Services • Data Manipulation • User-uploaded code, job scheduling Registry

8. VObs middleware developers Web/Grid services for the discovery, transport and integration of data Workflow & service composition Metadata and service registration Job management Security DB 2 DB 1 Registry App 3 Workflow Compute Resource 2 Portal

9. Data analysis tool developers • Data Access: • OGSA-DAI/data access web services • Service Registration • Integration into workflows • Job submission DB 1 Registry App 3 Workflow Compute Resource 2

10. Research astronomers • Initially: • Use of portal • Soon: • Script and tool development using APIs, local job control, wrapping apps as web services DB 2 DB 1 Registry Workflow Compute Resource 2 App 4 User Portal App 5

11. Summary of skills needed • Web/Grid services for data discovery, access, integration and manipulation • Metadata for data & service registration • Data curation – provenance, preservation • Workflow creation and execution • Job control – local and remote • Security

12. How can these needs be met? (1) • Learning through experience • Difficult: fast moving field; where to start? • Danger of learning the wrong technologies • Inefficient: undirected training can be slow • Hiring people with appropriate skills • Not many people with e-Science skills yet • …and expensive to employ on research grants • Really need astronomers for some jobs • Danger of losing scientific direction to projects

13. How can these needs be met? (2) • Existing staff: training courses • Can be expensive and time-consuming • Need to budget time and money for them • Funders need to understand their necessity • Future staff: education • Astronomers: MSc-level courses – either as MSc or as part of PhD training • IT specialists: inclusion of e-science content in CS degree programmes