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The first XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue has been released on 2003 April 7th. The XCAT-DB is one of the sites it is available from (http://xcatdb.u-strasbg.fr). It is a powerful tool to perform various kinds of scientific analysis, particularly designed to deal with links between XMM-Newton catalogue sources and correlated entries extracted from many archival catalogues available at CDS and NED. The XCAT-DB is able to inter-operate with CDS databases providing multiwave views of regions of interest. All pipeline products related to selected X-ray sources can also be viewed online or downloaded.
At the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre in Versoix, Geneva, we visualize the housekeeping as well as the raw science data of the INTEGRAL satellite in near real time. The goal is to recognize problems and to make a first analysis in case of an alert. Furthermore we display first scientific results with an interactive quick look program to recognize Targets of Opportunity (ToO) and to find new sources. This system was build using the graphical tools of the ROOT framework, developed at CERN, Geneva. We want to show on-line INTEGRAL data and demonstrate the flexible image tools we developed for INTEGRAL. All these displays are not pre-defined but can be configured by the user. They can also be used to access archived data.
Within the ESA's Science Operations and Data System Division, the Archive Development Group in Villafranca, Spain is responsible of developing and maintaining ESA Scientific Archives. For the ISO Data Archive (IDA) and the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA), the standard way to access to these ESA archives is through a powerful Java interface.
To allow the access to external applications and expert or normal users that need to retrieve data directly from the archive bypassing the Java User Interface, an integrated Archive Inter Operability system (AIO) has been developed for XSA and IDA. This AIO system can be divided in two main parts:
1. A wrapper to the Business Logic subsystem, allowing queries to the database to obtain metadata. In the same way than the rest of the IDA and XSA archives implementation, this part has been developed using the 3-tier architecture.
2. A wrapper to the Data Server subsystem to retrieve files from the archive repository. Product Retrieval can be done by using URLs or an Internet socket directly from the command line. The AIO in Url mode is being used to link to images from external pages or as a Product Server (for example by the well-known Aladin interface). This second method, the also known as 'AIO Socket', allows the user a very easy integration with scripts written by him/herself.
Using this two main concepts and as a combination of the query subsystem and the retrieval subsystem included in the AIO, we have adapted our interoperability services to comply the new VO standards, in particular SIAP (Simple Image Access Prototype).
During the demo we will show the different services offered by AIO:
General AIO services:
- Postcard Server (URL). One page per observation, containing general data and images for this observation.
- Product Server (URL). URL link to download products from the IDA/XSA archives, with observation number, file types, file extensions, processing levels� etc as arguments. We will describe the AIO-Aladin intercommunication to get images using this service.
- Product Server (Socket). We will perform some examples for the 'AIO Socket' to obtain products directly from your command line
VO SIAP compatible AIO services:
- Image Query: Search for images for a given region on the sky. This service is cone search compliant and also allows the performing of queries by other UCDs, for example, ID_TARGET (resolved by Simbad). Output could be in VoTable or in html format for human use.
- Image Retrieval: The Image Query result contains links to retrieve the images using the AIO retrieval subsystem.
PyFITS is a Python module developed for FITS file I/O. We'll demonstrate its use for FITS images and tables, illustrating the PyFITS classes and methods, as well as the array manipulation capabilities of numarray. PyFITS is convenient for interactive use, and we will also show two utility programs, fitsdiff and readgeis, as examples of its use in astronomical applications.
The task fitsdiff compares two FITS files and reports their differences, readgeis reads the STScI-style GEIS format files and converts them to FITS files or FITS objects. These two Python modules are showcased not only because they are useful astronomical tools but to demonstrate the ease of writing such applications using PyFITS and numarray. PyFITS can also make use of memory mapping, which significantly enhances its performance on large FITS files, both images and tables.
At STScI, we are also applying numarray and PyFITS for larger projects such as pydrizzle and the pipeline software for the new HST instrument COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph).
Chaco is a scientific Python plotting package capable of interactive plots (with interactive modifications of existing plots) as well as high quality hard-copy plots.
We will show the latest science prototypes of the US National Virtual Observatory project. These include a brown dwarf candidate search, a galaxy morphology Grid service, and a data inventory service that utilizes a dynamic resource registry.
We present the new implementation of CVcat, an interactive catalogue on cataclysmic variables, which is the first application based on AstroCat, a general framework for the installation and maintenance of web-based interactive astronomical databases. Registered users can contribute directly to the catalogue content by adding new objects, object properties, literature references, and annotations. The scientific quality control of the catalogue is carried out by a distributed editorial team. Searches in CVcat can be performed by object name, classification, certain properties or property ranges, and coordinates. Search results can be retrieved in several output formats, including XML. Old database states can be restored in order to ensure the citability of the catalogue. Furthermore, CVcat is designed to serve as a repository for reduced data from publications.
The ESO/ST-ECF archive (hosting data from HST, the VLT/I and from many instruments on the La Silla observatory) has always been at the forefront of new initiatives in the area of archives. Recently, new technologies such as magnetic disk based archive systems (NGAS) have been developed and put in operations. More value-added services have been made available (such as the WFPC2
The ALMA Common Software (ACS) is a CORBA-based framework that provides a common and homogeneous infrastructure for the whole ALMA software, from high-level data flow applications down to instrument control. Different application domains inside the ALMA system are supported by specialized packages.
A high level description of ACS will be presented at this conference by J.Schwarz [1]. Aspects of ACS for high level applications will be presented by H.Sommer [2].
This paper focuses on ACS support for the development of Control System applications. In this domain, ACS provides a generic abstraction of hardware control and monitor points that is independent of the hardware underneath. This abstraction layer is coupled to the hardware using the DevIO (Device Input/Output) interface, based on the bridge design pattern. Application developers have to implement DevIO classes that handle the details of the communication with the hardware.
ACS itself provides a default DevIO implementation which simply writes and reads into/from a memory location. Currently there are two other major DevIO implementations available: a CAN bus communication, used by ALMA, and a socket based implementation used by the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) project.
In spite of using different hardware and control electronics, the DevIO abstraction allows the ALMA and APEX projects to have the same device architecture down to the level of the DevIO implementation.
A demo will illustrate this and other basic concepts of ACS.
[1] J. Schwarz et. al., "The ALMA Software System", ADASS 2003 [2] H Sommer et. al., "Transparent XML Binding using the ALMA Common Software (ACS) Container/Component Framework", ADASS 2003
The CDS services will be demonstrated. In particular, new features developed in the VO context have been included in the public version of the services, e.g. filter capabilities using UCDs in VizieR and Aladin, customizable hierarchical data tree using the IDHA data model in Aladin, contour plots and colour composition in Aladin, ... The UCD tools will also be demonstrated.
Several of these developments have been funded by the European Commission through the AVO project and through the French Ministère de la Recherche et des Nouvelles Technologies through the IDHA project.
We present E3D, a visuazalition tool for Integral Field Spectrosgraphs data independent of the instrument. E3D has been developed as a collaborated effort of the Euro3D Research Training Network, to create a standard of IFS data visualization/analysis. It is based on the Euro3D data format, a new standard for IFS data storage.
E3D is under development. It is computed using C, using PGPLOT as graphical library. It comprises a Tcl/Tk interpreter, a Tcl/Tk-coded GUI, and a few standalone C-coded programs. The results is a complete scriptable tool, flexible and powerful for IFS visualization.
Members of the NOAO Data Products Program will be on-hand to discuss recent and future developments in:
o IRAF and X11IRAF - New releases and planned enhancements o The Mosaic Pipeline -- An IRAF-based, science driven, modular, highly configurable, and distributed reduction pipeline system for mosaic detectors o Gemini/IRAF Software -- Cooperative development of reduction software and core system functionality o NOAO Science Archive -- Ever-expanding NOAO Survey Program data access and next-generation archive plans o NOAO Data Transport System -- Acquisition- to-archive (and beyond) data transport
Demonstrations and further information on these and other projects will be available at the demo table.
This will demonstrate the latest Starlink software, including ORAC-DR pipelines, new Java applications, and distributed pipeline processing.
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