Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions

ADASS XVI will feature 7 Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions. BoFs are informal sessions created by attendees on topics of special interest. The following BoFs have been scheduled:

BoF 1: Sunday, 16:30-18:00

B1.1 - FITS (Canyon I/III)

W. Pence and the IAU FITS Working Group

Abstract:

This Birds-of-a-Feather session will present a summary of current activities related to the FITS data format and will provide a forum for the discussion of current issues. The session will begin with an overview of the changes to FITS that have been approved by the IAU FITS Working Group over the past year, including support for 64-bit integers and the new Registry of FITS conventions.

This will be followed by a discussion of possible activities that might take place over the next year. Suggestions include:

There will be an open forum at the end for short presentations on any other FITS-related topics.

 

BoF 2: Monday, 19:30-21:00

B2.1 - Astronomical Data Processing and the VO (Canyon I/III)

D. Tody, P. Grosbol

Abstract:

Will VO solve all astronomical data processing problems? The Virtual Observatory initiatives have made great progress to define standards for accessing and sharing astronomical data. Interfaces to large scale GRID computing have also been integrated into the concept. Further, many interesting VO enabled applications have been produced by different groups. Whereas these efforts will make analysis of large, multi-wavelength datasets easier, it is less clear if VO alone covers all the essential needs of the astronomical community at large for processing and analysis of data. This is especially true for management of data from observatories which support custom PI-based observing programs, where hands-on or custom processing of data is often still required.

The OPTICON Network 3.6 and NVO are considering specifications for a scalable environment for analysis and processing of astronomical data. Such an environment would integrate with the VO and provide a desktop portal for distributed data analysis with VO, but the primary purpose would be to support interactive and bulk processing and analysis of data from public observatories.

This BoF is intended to highlight the approach to data processing and analysis required to integrate observatory data processing needs with data analysis in the VO. After a set of short presentations on the OPTICON/NVO efforts of the past year, which have focused mainly on various early prototypes, we will start a discussion on how data processing and analysis needs can best be accommodated, and how to proceed with the more serious development efforts planned for the next year.

 

B2.2 - The Emerging Infrastructure of Autonomous Astronomy (Murphey I/II/III)

R. Seaman, T. Axelrod, A. Allan, R. White, R. Williams

Abstract:

The transient celestial events that nightly mystified our paleo-ancestors, transfix us yet today. Over the past few decades, our understanding of celestial objects has been enriched by numerous surveys of the static sky. Future advances in our understanding of cosmic processes demand that we approach the ancient study of transient celestial events with the rich statistical techniques learned while cataloging less mercurial phenomena. Given the serendipitous nature of transient astronomy, constructing scientifically useful sample data sets will also require surveys, such as proposed by LSST, on a vastly larger scale than have ever been attempted.

Meeting these challenges demands a new logistical framework for carrying out the practice of astronomy. Manual observing techniques not only will fail to serve, but do not even begin to address the complete problem of defining a new autonomous infrastructure that closes the loop from proposing new research – through experimental design – to the scheduling of survey telescope operations – to the data archiving and pipeline processing that result in the discovery of new transients – to the publishing of these events – through automated follow-up via robotic assets – and finally to the collection, display and interpretation of all related observations, resulting in adjustments to the original research directions.

Work in all of these areas is ongoing. Diverse groups are collaborating on a common interface architecture. For example, the IVOA VOEvent working group is leading the effort to characterize and publish sky transient alerts. The Heterogeneous Telescope Networks (HTN) is relying on the VOEvent standard to achieve its own goals. HTN is a confederation of observatories and robotic telescope projects seeking interoperability between the emerging robotic telescope networks, with a long term goal of creating an e-market for the exchange of telescope time. Two projects relying on VOEvent and HTN are eSTAR and TALONS. The eSTAR project uses an intelligent agent architecture to provide autonomous decision making, permitting its users to schedule observations over a peer-to-peer network of geographically distributed telescopes. TALONS, the Telescope Alert Operations Network System, intelligently interconnects heterogeneous astronomical resources within the Thinking Telescope Project, allowing the RAPTOR telescopes to function in full closed-loop autonomous operations, monitoring the sky and performing follow up operations. Some pertinent links:

The organizers plan to: discuss LSST planning and developments, hear reports from the recent HTN workshop in Germany, discuss the activities of the HTN consortium and of the IVOA VOEvent working group, the operation of the emerging distributed autonomous backbone network known as VOEventNet, and the broader implications of various Virtual Observatory initiatives.

Representatives of other projects exploring autonomous techniques are encouraged to contribute presentations to the BoF and their expertise to the working groups.

 

BoF 2.3 - Building Observatory Legacy Archives (Finger Rock I/II/III)

R. Hook, H. Jenkner

Abstract:

Many observatories and space missions aim to extend the usefulness of their data product collections into the period after instruments or telescopes have ceased operation by establishing "legacy archives". At present the three Hubble data archives (STScI, ST-ECF and CADC) are starting to build such a legacy archive for Hubble (the HLA) although the observatory is expected to continue operations for several years. The HLA activities are described at this meeting along with other legacy archives.

Such legacy archives, particularly for large and highly heterogeneous data collections, pose many challenges, but will be vital for the Virtual Observatory. Observing programmes designed to answer specific scientific questions create less tractable data collections when compared to surveys, such as 2MASS and SDSS where uniformity and consistency were primary design goals. In making the transition from classical archives to legacy archives, the emphasis shifts from serving low-level products with a relatively long latency to high-level products, including comprehensive metadata, in near realtime through powerful, often VO-based, browsing mechanisms.

 

BoF 3: Tuesday, 17:30-19:00

BoF 3.1 - Pipeline Processing of Spectroscopic Observations (Finger Rock I)

E. Griffin

Abstract:

Over the past 15 years we have witnessed an increased energy (or rather, a decreasing disaffection) for creating archives of telescope observations. In the beginning few even "kept the bits" in forms that were at all convenient to retrieve, but we have still a long way to go; even today the practice of storing raw frames along with a catalogue of which calibrations should be applicable causes the researcher who needs information fairly rapidly to think twice before choosing that route.

There is now a growing pressure for observatories to create archives of observational data in scientifically meaningful units, but many institutions claim that to do so will absorb resources that they cannot spare. The current bottleneck, for the archival researchers and users alike, is in reducing the observational data into those necessary units. In principle there is one "correct" method for each telescope/spectrograph combination, though one may only be able to approach that asymptotically; but for each individual to have to work out and then apply that method each time is an absurd waste of human resources. A robotic method of basic data massaging (a.k.a. "pipeline processing") will pay for itself over and over again.

In 1997 the IAU Working Group for Spectroscopic Data Archives considered in some depth what was required in the case of pipeline processing of echelle data. We concluded that it was in principle feasible, but that we were probably a little ahead of our time. Nearly a decade later there is still no concerted effort anywhere to address these matters, and it is high time to raise the subject again. Among those attending ADASSS are very likely numberous people who have just the necessary expertise and experience....

This BoF will be organized as a round-table discussion, with key introductions from speakers around different themes:

 

BoF 3.2 - IRAF USers and Developers (Finger Rock II)

M. Fitzpatrick, F. Valdes, R. Seaman, N. Zarate

Abstract:

The emphasis and budgets of astronomical software have shifted in recent years from community-wide projects sponsored by national centers, to smaller systems focused on the goals of individual institutions. A large fraction of users, however, continue to rely on the large legacy facilities to accomplish their science. IRAF became community-supported over the last year through the http://iraf.net web site. We believe that it must also now become community-developed if it is to survive and remain responsive to the needs of these many users, while it also transitions to possible future integration with the new community-wide data analysis framework standards and the Virtual Observatory. iraf.net was established precisely to rebuild IRAF's user-community around the expertise of a trusted core of developers, while allowing all to benefit from the self-support and direction of a wide user base.

The purpose of this BoF is to organize IRAF users and developers who share our interest in the future of IRAF under a community open-source model. The BoF will include presentations on current and planned work by the core iraf.net developers, and we solicit talks and contributions regarding IRAF related projects of all sorts from other institutions or from individual IRAF users. An open discussion will follow, exploring the relative priorities of various future core system and application package projects. We hope to enlist developers to work with us to realize these projects. Projects may refer not only to specific developments in IRAF or to the iraf.net site, but to broader ADASS interests such as the creation of an astronomical-software job board or the forging of collaborations between users or organizations.

Presentations and demonstrations are expected to take up less than half of the allowed time; the remainder will be reserved for discussion and organization.

BoF 3.3 - Next Generation of Visualization Tools for Astrophysics (Finger Rock III)

C. Gheller, U. Becciani, P. Teuben

Abstract:

Visualization is a valuable instrument to help scientists and, in particular, astronomers in analyzing, refining, selecting data and results. New technologies give the opportunity of exploiting new graphical tools, which supports multimensional visualization of huge datasets, immersive rendering, plain access to remote and distributed resources. Recent progress of the VO environment provides effective instruments for cooperation and interoperability between different data and etherogeneous tools. These new resources have to be included and exploited by data handling software. However, often, especially in the open source framework, such tools are either created to fulfill a specific request, and therefore they can be hardly used by a wide community, or they are built with little feedback from the end users, becoming soon of little interest. In this BoF we propose to start a discussion between graphic software developers and astronomers. From one side, we invite developers to illustrate what they are working on, what oppotunities they offer, what is the expected progress in the field. On the other side, astronomers can provide their feedback on available tools and propose their suggestions, requirements and desiderata for the coming software. The BoF session, obviously, is not expected to go through all the aspects and details of the topic, but we hope to start a discussions that could continue by forums and workshops and that could provide software developers meaningful information and valuable indications.

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