AstroGrid Science Tools/Workflows

Call for Proposals

Deadline : 22nd May 2006

The AstroGrid project is seeking proposals for new or adapted science tools or workflows that enable specific astronomical projects to be carried out with the AstroGrid system. The successful teams will work with a small team of AstroGrid staff to complete their projects and/or build new software tools. These projects will be completed by end December 2006.

INTRODUCTION TO ASTROGRID

AstroGrid is currently developing and now deploying the UK's Virtual Observatory. The current April 2006 release (2006.2) (see http://www.astrogrid.org/launch) offers a number of powerful capabilities, helping the astronomer find, get, and work with a wide range of astrophysical data.

The capabilities offered by AstroGrid offer significant potential to support the data analysis and discovery needs of a wide range of astronomers, from Cosmologists to Solar Physicists. The system is still developmental in nature, but the facilities available are rapidly increasing.

This first AstroGrid 'tools-call' seeks ideas from the community to support specific early science projects. The successful proposal teams will gain access to expert AstroGrid developer and scientist effort - and over a period of six months will be able to configure AstroGrid to suit their science use case.

PROPOSAL PROCEDURE

Proposals are limited to two pages and should outline the science goals, the approach to be taken and how it draws upon VO resources and capabilities offered through the AstroGrid VO system and the nature of any tools or science applications to be developed.

The proposal should indicate what AstroGrid support is required in terms of technical or scientific support. The proposers might suggest developing a new tool, making some particular application available via the VO, ensuring access to some particular range of data sets, or simply create a science workflow which would solve their specific science problem. (In this last case a parameterised workflow might be the end product - see those available via the current AstroGrid workbench as examples).

AstroGrid would provide the required technical developer support to the proposal team in creating the VO capability that they propose. The team would be invited to visit the AstroGrid project team (at AstroGrid's expense) at the start of the six month development period, to define the task. AstroGrid would then work with the team to produce the tool or capability, with contact via email or telecons through the development phase.

AstroGrid will make available a small team of developers and scientists to support 2 or 3 successful programmes over the period Jul - Dec 2006.

Each successful project team will be expected to provide a brief final report or reference to a peer-reviewed research publication based on the research. Any software developed as a result of this effort should be shared with the astronomy community through the AstroGrid project.

Proposals (pdf, odp or doc) should be submitted via email to astrogrid_science@star.le.ac.uk by no later than 22 May 2006. Additional information and answers to questions may be obtained by sending e-mail to astrogrid_science@star.le.ac.uk.

The proposed projects will be reviewed by a review panel from the AstroGrid Science Advisory Group (which is composed of representatives from the UK astronomy community). The AstroGrid Project Management team will advise the review panel on the technical feasibility of the proposed projects. Proposals will be judged on the basis of science goals, technical feasibility, and the wider impact for the Virtual Observatory. It is anticipated that the results of the selection procedure will be known by 20 June 2006.

Background Links:

APPENDIX: Brief Summary of Current AstroGrid System Capability

• Find data and applications by searching the 'registry' (a kind of 'astro-google')
• Use 'AstroScope' - a powerful tool for finding data over a region of the night sky - be they images, spectra, or catalogues. The user can explore the results, and by simple point and click can either visualise individual data sets, or save any number of the data back to their local disk space or to their 'MySpace'.
• Use the 'Application launcher' - this gives a common interface to a wide range of well known astronomical applications. And you can work on data held in your MySpace.
• Use the 'Query Builder' to send their database queries to a wide range of data bases, using one interface, one query language (based on standard SQL) , and get results returned in a standard file format - VOTable.
• Use the 'Workflow Builder' to create simple or powerful sequences of tasks to find and process data. A range of examples and help sheets are available to guide the novice user.
• Use a prepackaged 'Parameterised Workflow' to carry out a number of common processes:
• the redshift maker: create you own object catalogues from multicolour image data (SExtractor), generate a federated source list (XMatch), and generate the statistical photometric redshifts for these objects (HyperZ, Bpz)
• colour cutter: give a colour criteria (e.g. H-K > 3, g-r < 2) and return the objects meeting those criteria from a range of optical and IR catalogues (e.g. ING Wide Field Survey, 2MASS).
• the movie maker: enter a start and end time, a generate a movie of the sun (from either TRACE or SOHO-EIT) data
• Visualise any of your data with TopCat, Aladin or other powerful client applications designed to fully exploit data provided in standard VO formats.