Category Archives: informatics

How Should Astronomy Pay For Software?

Posted on October 20, 2014 by astrocompute

So asked Frossie Enonomou at ADASS XXIV in Calgary, October 2014.  She gave her view of the answer to this question. It’s not of course about paying for software, but about paying people to write software.  Generally speaking, it’s not … Continue reading →

Posted in agile development, astroinformatics, Astronomy, Career Advice, careers, Computing, cyberinfrastructure, High performance computing, History of Computing!, informatics, information sharing, jobs, LSST, Open Access, Open Source, programming, Scientific computing, social media, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, user communities | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From The Front Lines of ADASS 2014 – Visualization

Posted on October 7, 2014 by astrocompute

Visualization technology is undergoing a transformation these days, and the October 7 morning session was devoted to advances in visualization. Here I will give a synopsis of some of the talks. Chris Beaumont described Glue as a “Hackable User Interface,” … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, Computing, Data mining, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, programming, publishing, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, visualization | 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 Front Lines of ADASS 2014 – October 6 2014 Morning Sessions

Posted on October 6, 2014 by astrocompute

Nick Walton spoke about data processing challenges for PLATO, ESA’s next generation planet-hunter. It is an approved ESA M3 mission with a launch date in 2024, with a nominal six year mission. Broadly speaking, it aims to detect earth sized … Continue reading →

Posted in archives, astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data Management, exoplanets, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, metadata management, programming, Scientific computing, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, Time domain astronomy, time series data | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Front Lines of ADASS 2014 – October 5 2014

Posted on October 5, 2014 by astrocompute

This week, I will be posting about the technical sessions at the Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems  XXIV meeting (ADASS, http://adass2014.org) in Calgary, Alberta. This annual meeting ” … is a forum for scientists, developers and programmers working in … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, Catalogs, computer modeling, Computing, cross-matching catalogs, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data Management, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, metadata management, Parallelization, programming, Scientific computing, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Valuing Software and Other Research Outputs – Talk by Dan Katz.

Posted on October 2, 2014 by astrocompute

This is the title of a paper presented by Dan Katz at the Altmetrics Conference in London. Dan is the Program Director, NSF Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, and one of the founders of the Working Towards Sustainable Software for Science: Practice … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, computer videos, Computing, computing videos, cyberinfrastructure, High performance computing, informatics, information sharing, metrics, Open Access, programming, publishing, Scientific computing, social media, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, user communities | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Enhancements to the Astronomy Source Code Library (ASCL)

Posted on September 11, 2014 by astrocompute

The Astronomy Source Code Library (ASCL) is a rapidly growing, free online registry for astronomical source codes that have been used in research that have appeared in, or been submitted to, peer-reviewed publication. There are now over 900 codes indexed by … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, cyberinfrastructure, Data Management, document management, informatics, information sharing, Internet, Open Access, Scientific computing, social media, social networking, software engineering, text processing, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Impact of the Virtual Astronomical Observatory

Posted on August 29, 2014 by astrocompute

The U. S. Virtual Astronomical Observatory project, funded jointly by NSF and NASA since May 2010, will close on September 30, 2014. The project held its close-out review on July 10 and 11, 2014, and you can download the report … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, Computing, cyberinfrastructure, data archives, Data Management, informatics, information sharing, metadata management, Observatories, programming, Scientific computing, SciPy2014, social media, social networking, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, user communities, Virtual Observatory, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Software Carpentry Lessons Learned – A Talk at Sci Py2014

Posted on August 22, 2014 by astrocompute

This is a video of a highly entertaining presentation by Greg Wilson, the founder of Software Carpentry, which teaches lab skills for scientific computing through intensive “boot camps” and on-line resources. The story of how Software Carpentry came about alone … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, computer videos, Computing, computing videos, cyberinfrastructure, informatics, information sharing, programming, R, Scientific computing, SciPy2014, software engineering, software maintenance, software sustainability, user communities, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Videos From the 2014 Sagan Summer Workshop On-line

Posted on August 14, 2014 by astrocompute

The NASA Exoplanet Science Center (NEXScI) hosts the Sagan Workshops, annual themed conferences aimed at introducing the latest techniques in exoplanet astronomy to young researchers. The workshops emphasize interaction with data, and include hands-on sessions where participants use their laptops … Continue reading →

Posted in astroinformatics, Astronomy, astronomy surveys, computer videos, Computing, computing videos, exoplanets, informatics, information sharing, Kepler, publishing, Scientific computing, social media, social networking, Time domain astronomy, time series data, Transiting exoplanets, user communities, W. M. Keck Observatory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment