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Australian Virtual Observatory. International Astronomical Union GA 2003 Joint Discussion 08 17th-18th July 2003 Sydney David Barnes The University of Melbourne. Our take on virtual observatories. bring legacy astronomy archives on-line and ensure future project compliance
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Australian Virtual Observatory International Astronomical Union GA 2003 Joint Discussion 08 17th-18th July 2003 Sydney David Barnes The University of Melbourne
Our take on virtual observatories • bring legacy astronomy archives on-line and ensure future project compliance • provide access to archived realisations of simulations and to resources for computing against new parameter sets • describe data fully, and support a small and well-chosen set of interoperability protocols • develop toolsand interfaces to find, acquire, process and visualise data • build national and international grids to host the data, tools and interfaces
Why we’re involved… • Australian data archives are under-utilised, internationally and nationally. • Common format data enables common tools: “learn once, use many”. Tools can be cross-wavelength, cross-paradigm (observed, simulated, …) • It is a fair bet that VOs of some sort will be with us for some time, so we need to start learning about VO techniques in Australia. • It is simply a Good Thing to do things The Same Way, where possible. • We have expertise to offer in niche areas, eg. WCS, visualisation, spectral line surveys, …
Aus-VO structure 2003 • Phase A funded AUD 260K by a 2003 Australian Research Council grant: • The University of Melbourne • The University of Sydney • CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility • Anglo-Australian Observatory • Additional institutes participating w/o direct funding from the ARC grant: • ANU, Mount Stromlo Observatory & APAC • CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences • University of Queensland • VPAC & GridBus (Melb) • Lead investigator Rachel Webster (Melb) • Project scientist David Barnes (Melb)
Aus-VO projects 2003 • Common format on-line archive projects: • HIPASS catalog: HI Parkes All Sky Survey: neutral Hydrogen spectral line survey, 4,300 sources with ~30 parameters and 1024-channel spectra • SUMSS catalog: Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey: radio continuum survey at 843 MHz, 107,000 sources with ~15 parameters • 2dFGRS QSO catalog: 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey: optical spectra of >20,000 southern quasi-stellar objects • ATCA archive: Australia Telescope Compact Array archive: all observations since 1988, circa 1.5 TB of more than 1,000 separate observing projects! Substantial exercise in describing data with metadata. • MACHO archive: Massive Compact Halo Objects archive: 8yr lightcurves for >18M stars
Aus-VO projects 2003 • Server-based visualisation tools: • client canvas for legacy software package AIPS++ to display to from a remote server (ATNF) • grid-service implementation of distributed volume rendering - remote data transferred to remote cluster, with display and control applet supplied by coordinating portal • Pipelines to enable on-line reprocessing of archived raw or pre-processed telescope data: • Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope • ATCA archive thumbnail generator
Niche role: visualisation • ATNF will build a web-based PixelCanvas so that AIPS++ visualisation apps can be deployed as Web-Service and Grid- Service Java Applets • AIPS++ is modern, OpenSource software for reducing (radio) astronomy data, 1.6M lines of code.
Collaborative role: grid-based volume rendering • With AstroGrid we have developed our existing distributed-data volume rendering code into a fully-fledged Grid-Service. [see the interactive demo at the IVOA stand of the Expo] • render lines of sight through the entire volume - this is volume rendering and may offer new insights to complex data collections, images and catalogs.
Team effort! • Collaborating groups now include • Melbourne (Physics & CSSE Gridbus) • AstroGrid (Cambridge, Leicester) • VPAC, APAC, CSIRO CMIS, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Univ QLD, as data centres and rendering clusters • Why? • Saves you from fetching large data files • Enables use of distributed computing resources • Demonstrator of grid technologies for VOs
General future challenges & opportunities • Data grid: replica catalogs done properly, bandwidth (esp. regional), certificate authority, virtual data grids?, … • Services for uploading user codes: is a sandbox needed?, compiler and library versions, is a cluster needed? • Grid management - synchronising Globus, Tomcat, … versions, legacy software, account names, geographical location, firewalls, … - use MDS?
2004 ARC LIEF grant • 10 partners! • more data archives on-line • theory realisations and codes on-line • more tools developed with special focus on server-based visualisation • construction of the Australian Astronomy Grid…