1. Australian Virtual Observatory International Astronomical Union GA 2003 Joint Discussion 08 17th-18th July 2003 Sydney David Barnes The University of Melbourne

2. 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 visualisedevelop tools and interfaces to find, acquire, process and visualise data build national and international grids to host the data, tools and interfaces

3. Why were 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, …

4. 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)

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. Collaborative role: grid-based volume rendering [see the interactive demo at the IVOA stand of the Expo]With AstroGrid we have developed our existing distributed-data volume rendering code into a fully-fledged Grid-Service. [see the interactive demo at the IVOA stand of the Expo] volume renderingrender lines of sight through the entire volume - this is volume rendering and may offer new insights to complex data collections, images and catalogs.

9. 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

10. 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? legacy softwareGrid management - synchronising Globus, Tomcat, … versions, legacy software, account names, geographical location, firewalls, … - use MDS?

11. 2004 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 Australian Astronomy Grid…construction of the Australian Astronomy Grid…

12. The Australian Astronomy Grid 2004

13. http://www.aus-vo.org