ANU Internet Futures and the Virtual Observatory

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ANU Internet Futures and the Virtual Observatory
or an example APAC-NF mass-data project

• ANU Internet Futures Project
• Data Grids Group
• Jon Smillie
• Data.Grids_at_anu.edu.au

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Overview

• What is the Virtual Observatory?
• What data are we working with?
• What are we doing with that data?
• Upcoming projects.

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What is the Virtual Observatory?

• Worldwide Astronomy Data Online
• Dont go to a telescope, go online!
• Search multiple data sets, wavelengths, and
  instruments.
• Web interfaces, plus
• Metadata standards
• Data format standards
• Interoperability and exchange
• Data mining, visualisation, and more
• Distributed international undertaking

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The Macho Project

• Dark Matter search
• gravitational microlensing
• Monitored 20 million stars over 10 years
• 100,000 74MB two colour images
• 1TB of photometry
• Utilised Mt Stromlo 50 Telescope

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Macho Data at the ANU

• 10TB calibrated images, photometry and time
  series lightcurve data
• Plus instrument calibration data, metadata, etc
• Hosted on APAC-NF MDSS data silo system at ANUSF
• Rich, internationally valued data set
• Variable star science

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Macho Data VO Enabled

• Put the right interfaces on the data
• Bottom-up integration into the international VO
• Web interface at wwwmacho.anu.edu.au
• Z39.50 metadata, Zebra metadata server, FTP
• Converting metadata to VOTable 1.0 standard
• Emerging international VO XML metadata standard
• XSLT pipeline, UCD semantic mappings
• Converting images to VO compliant FITS files
• World Coordinate System - Canonical image
  locators
• Multi-image FITS files
• Image processing pipeline - 7TB of images!

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After MACHO 4S

• Stromlo Southern Sky Survey
• Map of entire southern sky
• Relatively shallow, with uniform photometry
• Data streaming from MSO to APAC MDSS
• First data was due July 2003
• Setbacks due to Canberra fires
• 25TB over 5 years
• VO Compliant data standards and interfaces
• Backbone of Southern Sky Virtual Observatory
• Build on MACHO lessons and infrastructure

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Summary

• Virtual Observatories Astronomy
• International collaborative effort
• Data standards development
• MACHO data set hosted at APAC-NF
• VO-enable MACHO data
• Metadata and data standardisation
• Ontological/semantic standardisation
• Interfaces and interoperability
• Stromlo Southern Sky Survey
• VO ready from day one

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References

• wwwmacho.anu.edu.au
• www.mso.anu.edu.au
• nf.apac.edu.au/jgs900/
• datagrids.anu.edu.au
• www.mso.anu.edu.au/news/archive/2003/01_jan/
• Data.Grids_at_anu.edu.au