australian virtual observatory international astronomical union ga 2003 joint discussion 08...
TRANSCRIPT
Australian Virtual Observatory
International Astronomical Union GA 2003Joint Discussion 08
17th-18th July 2003 Sydney
David BarnesThe 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 tools and interfaces to find, acquire, process and visualisevisualise 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 [see the interactive demo at the IVOA stand of the Expo] the interactive demo at the IVOA stand of the Expo]
• render lines of sight through the entire volume - this is volume renderingvolume 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 softwarelegacy software, account names, geographical location, firewalls, … - use MDS?
2004 ARC LIEF grant2004 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 Australian Astronomy Grid…Astronomy Grid…
The Australian Astronomy Grid 2004The Australian Astronomy Grid 2004
http://www.aus-vo.org