AstroGrid and the Virtual Observatory

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AstroGrid and the Virtual Observatory

• John Taylor
• Institute for Astronomy

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Lofty goals...

• Making all the world's astronomy data and all the
  world's astronomy software as available to the
  user as if it resides on her desktop.

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Well, why can't I just have the data on my
desktop?

• SuperCOSMOS 2.5 Tb
• WFCAM 14Tb per year
• VISTA 4Tb per week
• Physicists, Astronomers, Biologists all facing
  the same problem
• You just can't

Steve Lloyd http//www.gridpp.ac.uk/talks/Data_De
luge_Brunel_2005.ppt
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Is there an astronomer in the house?

• I'm going to focus on what AstroGrid can do for
  you now and ignore (mostly) how much really
  clever computer science and grid technology is in
  it.

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What I'm not going to talk about

• Web services
• Grids
• Architecture
• Java, xml, SOAP, Globus, the IVOA, ADQL, VOTable,
  PLASTIC, SIAP, SSAP, STAP, SkyNodes....
• If we do our job right you shouldn't even know we
  exist.

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Instead I'm going to show you how to make
movies...

• Workflows batch processing for the e-science
  generation

And find more data than you know what to do with
from the comfort of your laptop

• HelioScope
• AstroScope

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The Solar Movie Maker

• Extracts images from SOHO or TRACE databases and
  makes a movie out of them.
• An example of a parameterised workflow
• Others include
• Photometric red shift makers
• Colour cutters
• As well as doing something useful, serve as
  templates to get you started writing your own
  workflows.

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Meanwhile...HelioScope

• Try it out
• http//software.astrogrid.org/jnlp/beta/workbench/
  workbench.jnlp

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AstroScope
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AstroGrid

• Edinburgh contacts
• John Taylor jdt_at_roe.ac.uk
• Bob Mann rgm_at_roe.ac.uk
• http//www.astrogrid.org
• Try out Helio/AstroScope
• http//software.astrogrid.org/jnlp/beta/workbench/
  workbench.jnlp