In this talk I shall give a brief
introduction to the SC4DEVO initiative – its motivation, its
funding through the
Visualization of distributed data and information is a key aspect of making scientifc use of Virtual Observatories. In this presentation I will highlight some of the challenges posed by the size and diversity of data in the VO, using examples from the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) prototypes. Also, drawing from the AVO Science Reference Mission, I will describe scientific visualization requirements from a broad range of VO science cases.
I will be presenting are a sequence of high-dimensionality tools for data analysis (a bayesian anomaly classifier, spectral decomposition, the WESIX webservice and the Pixel-z tool, among others). I will follow each with a description of how particular visualisation tools or requirements would enhance and improve the science that can be facilitated with these tools.
RVS - the Remote Visualisation System - is a server-side display and analysis system of astronomical images. As such, it is targeted mainly at image archives serving large datasets, which cannot be transferred to the user. It has been designed to fit into the VO using web services and is integrated with some established VO components such as SIAP/Conesearch. The server component is based on CORBA to enable cross-environment development (c++/java) and scalability. RVS has several client interfaces, a web service definition for reuse, a java client application and static html access.
I will present the main features of the Aladin interactive sky atlas. The implementation of Virtual Observatory standards (VOTable, SIAP, ConeSearch, UCDs) makes it a VO portal as well as a powerful data visualizer and integrator. In particular, I will show how Aladin adresses some typical VO challenges: locating data of interest, browsing and accessing distributed datasets, exploring and visualizing multi-wavelength data. My talk will be illustrated by a live demo focused on new features (multiview, blinking, postage stamp generator) allowing easy comparison of multi-wavelength images. Finally, I will talk about interaction with other tools and future developments.
VisIVO is an open source software for the visualization and analysis of astronomical data, built in collaboration between the Catania Astrophysical Observatory and CINECA. It is specifically designed to deal with multidimentional data (like catalogues or results of numerical simulations), that can be loaded both from local files and from remote databases. The most popular file formats (Fits, VO Tables, HDF) are supported. Furthermore information and data can be retrievied from the CDS Vizier service (or any other analogous services), using the standard Web Service technology. Images can be loaded as well, using the CDS Aladin software, that can be run and controlled directly from VisIVO.
TBD
The Virtual Observatory provides mechanisms for astronomers to use globally distributed services in a transparent and seamless manner for data mining and visualisation. But what happens when the existing compute resources an astronomer wishes to use are not exposed in an IVOA compliant manner? This talk describes current work to allow compute resources exposed via Globus, Condor, and SSH, to be utilised from within the Virtual Observatory framework in a consistent manner. A key aim is to abstract the astronomer from underlying middleware, job submission and scheduling decisions.
The AVO Science Reference Mission document indicates that astronomers require a broad range of visualization tools: search functions, statistical analyses and discriminant functions, modelling of errors and theoretical predictions and visual overlays of the results. But a byword of visualization researchers is "interactivity" ie involving the human eye (ear, touch...) to enhance our perception of structure in data. This talk presents a brief survey of tools & techniques in the hope of opening a discussion. If time and technology permits, some simple (?) vis tools will then be demonstrated.
TBD