Category Archives: databases

From The Front Lines of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016

Posted on July 15, 2016 by astrocompute

I attended the SPIE meeting on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation in Edinburgh, Scotland from June 26 through July 1, and I am sharing my views on the conference presentations. Approximately 2,000 astronomers, software engineers and instrumentation specialists crowded the Edinburgh … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, computer modeling, cyberinfrastructure, Data Management, databases, Gemini, Grid Computing, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, programming, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, TMT, user communities, Virtual Observatory, visualization, W. M. Keck Observatory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The SAMI Data Archive: A Prototype of An Archive of the Future?

Posted on February 10, 2016 by astrocompute

Astronomy data sets are not simply exploding in size – they are exploding in complexity too. Witness the data sets obtained from integral-field spectroscopy (IFS).  While the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral-field spectrograph (SAMI) survey has exceeded measurements of 1,000 galaxies, surveys such … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, Computing, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data formats, Data Management, Data mining, databases, FITS, HDF5, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, Open Source, Python, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Does An Astronomer Become A Data Scientist?

Posted on January 29, 2016 by astrocompute

I have been asked this question by several junior colleagues, so I thought my answer might be valuable to a broader audience. In particular, these young scientists were keen to learn how their skills might be transferable to another field. … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, Career Advice, careers, computer modeling, computing videos, Data Management, Data mining, Data Science, databases, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, programming, R, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, statistical analysis, statistics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tools For Astronomical Big Data

Posted on March 12, 2015 by astrocompute

This week, I attended the Tools for Astronomical Big Data Workshop, held in Tucson from March 9 -11 and sponsored by NOAO. Over 100 practitioners gathered to “survey the present state of the art in addressing the challenges of conducting … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, Catalogs, Cloud computing, cyberinfrastructure, Data Management, Data mining, databases, DBMS, Grid Computing, High performance computing, image mosaics, informatics, information sharing, Montage, Observatories, Parallelization, programming, Scientific computing, SDSS, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, Uncategorized, user communities, visualization, XSEDE | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Astronomical Data Formats – Past, Present and Future ADASS BOF Session

Posted on October 7, 2014 by astrocompute

This session began with a call to action from Bob Hanisch: FITS is 35 years old; how do we go forward? Should we use VO-agreed data models as the high-level abstraction, and use HDF5 as the processing and transport layer? … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, computer modeling, Computing, data archives, Data formats, Data Management, databases, FITS, informatics, information sharing, metadata, metadata management, programming, publishing, Scientific computing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The One-Degree Imager – Portal, Pipeline and Archive (ODI-PPA) User Services

Posted on July 20, 2014 by astrocompute

Last week, I blogged about the ODI archive architecture, based on a talk given by Arvind Gopu at the SPIE Meeting in Montreal, Canada on June 22nd.  This week I will write about the user services layered on top of … Continue reading →

Posted in archives, astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, Computing, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data Management, databases, High performance computing, image mosaics, informatics, information sharing, metadata management, programming, Python, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, WIYN | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Metadata and Data Management for the Keck Observatory Archive

Posted on June 23, 2014 by astrocompute

This is the title of a poster (spie14_koa_poster) by Hien Tran et al. (the et al. are the Keck Archive team), presented at the SPIE  Software and Cyberinfrastructure conference, part of “Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation” in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. Data … Continue reading →

Posted in archives, astroinformatics, Astronomy, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data Management, databases, informatics, information sharing, metadata, metadata management, Observatories, Operations, programming, Scientific computing, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, Time domain astronomy, time series data, W. M. Keck Observatory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

National Data Service Animation

Posted on June 13, 2014 by astrocompute

Following on from yesterday’s post, Here is an animation that shows the goals of the National Data Service:

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, computer modeling, Computing, computing videos, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data Management, databases, Grid Computing, informatics, information sharing, Open Access, programming, Scientific computing, social media, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Creating A Galactic Plane Atlas With Amazon Web Services

Posted on February 13, 2014 by astrocompute

Creating A Galactic Plane Atlas With Amazon Web Services This post is based on a paper by G. Bruce Berriman, Ewa Deelman, John Good, Gideon Juve, Jamie Kinney, Ann Merrihew, and Mats Rynge. It was submitted to an IEEE Special … Continue reading →

Posted in archives, astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, Cloud computing, Computing, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, databases, High performance computing, image mosaics, informatics, information sharing, Montage, Parallelization, Scientific computing, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bringing the VO to Astronomers: Command Line Access To VO Services

Posted on February 7, 2014 by astrocompute

One of the goals of the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO) is to bring the Virtual Observatory to astronomers; that is, provide access to worldwide data sets through tools and environments that astronomers use everyday. A poster paper, reproduced below, presented … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, Computing, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, databases, informatics, information sharing, Python, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, Virtual Observatory, visualization | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment