WFAU Supplementary Equipment Grant
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
This grant provides computer hardware necessary for continued operation of the WFCAM and VIRCAM Science Archives, which curate and publish near-infrared photometric data from the Wide-Field Camera on UKIRT and from public surveys being undertaken with the VISTA telescope.
Planned Impact
The focus of WFAU's work is to support and enhance the research undertaken by professional astronomers, but its likely beneficiaries include a wider community of academics from other disciplines, companies in the commercial IT sector, educators and members of the general public: we address each of these classes of beneficiaries in turn.
Academics from other disciplines
Astronomy is ahead of many disciplines in developing, and adhering to, standards for recording metadata and for aiding interoperability between data resources. WFAU staff are in demand, therefore, as speakers at multi-disciplinary workshops (e.g. those organised by the Digital Curation Centre and the e-Science Institute) to describe the Unit's work as an example of best practice in scientific data curation. WFAU has also provided detailed material for case studies developed by the DCC and several academic and commercial organisations producing reports on aspects of data curation (e.g. for JISC). This engagement with wider data curation community will continue under the aegis of this grant, with WFAU disseminating best practice through publications in the data curation literature and further workshops: these are typically made available on the WWW, and so can be of benefit to a wider community of researchers.
WFAU enjoys a long-standing collaborative relationship with computer science (CS) researchers in the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, as aspects of our work provide either demanding applications of new CS techniques or the stimulus for new methods. This interaction has led to the publications in the CS literature in the areas of machine learning, data management and multi-agent systems, and we intend to continue this collaboration through this grant.
The commercial IT sector
WFAU's sky survey curation activities produce challenging computational requirements. On the hardware side, we intend to continue our long-standing relationship with a local hardware supplier, Eclipse Computing of Lugar, Ayrshire, who have, in the past, lent us hardware to prototype high-performance databases systems and collaborated with us in their evaluation. In this way, they can continue to exploit our motivation for building systems meeting our requirements as a means to develop expertise that they can deploy in commercial settings that have similar workloads to our own.
On the software side, we intend to become involved in the SciDB (www.scidb.org) initiative, which is developing a new open source data management system which extends the relational model: this would secure UK involvement in the development of this exciting new technology and aid its adoption by UK companies in domains (e.g. oil exploration, pharmaceuticals) facing similar data management and analysis scalability challenges.
Educators and the general public
WFAU has an established record in outreach, inherited from its previous incarnation as the UK Schmidt Telescope Unit (UKSTU) of the ROE. WFAU staff provide popular computer-based displays at the annual ROE Open Days, and these will be enhanced during the period of this grant through use of new technologies, such as Google Sky and Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope. These technologies could be developed for outreach purposes in two ways: (i) firstly, we could post online static KML files that users could upload into their Google Sky installation and view a guided tour of highlights of WFAU-curated sky survey datasets, with explanatory text for educators, providing an updated version of the widely-used teaching packs produced by UKSTU; (ii) for more serious amateur astronomers we could generate KML files dynamically from queries against our databases, so that they could interact with our data through the medium of Google Sky. By presenting astronomical data in a readily accessible format, using modern computational techniques, this could aid development of IT skills, as well as dissemination of information about astronomy.
Academics from other disciplines
Astronomy is ahead of many disciplines in developing, and adhering to, standards for recording metadata and for aiding interoperability between data resources. WFAU staff are in demand, therefore, as speakers at multi-disciplinary workshops (e.g. those organised by the Digital Curation Centre and the e-Science Institute) to describe the Unit's work as an example of best practice in scientific data curation. WFAU has also provided detailed material for case studies developed by the DCC and several academic and commercial organisations producing reports on aspects of data curation (e.g. for JISC). This engagement with wider data curation community will continue under the aegis of this grant, with WFAU disseminating best practice through publications in the data curation literature and further workshops: these are typically made available on the WWW, and so can be of benefit to a wider community of researchers.
WFAU enjoys a long-standing collaborative relationship with computer science (CS) researchers in the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, as aspects of our work provide either demanding applications of new CS techniques or the stimulus for new methods. This interaction has led to the publications in the CS literature in the areas of machine learning, data management and multi-agent systems, and we intend to continue this collaboration through this grant.
The commercial IT sector
WFAU's sky survey curation activities produce challenging computational requirements. On the hardware side, we intend to continue our long-standing relationship with a local hardware supplier, Eclipse Computing of Lugar, Ayrshire, who have, in the past, lent us hardware to prototype high-performance databases systems and collaborated with us in their evaluation. In this way, they can continue to exploit our motivation for building systems meeting our requirements as a means to develop expertise that they can deploy in commercial settings that have similar workloads to our own.
On the software side, we intend to become involved in the SciDB (www.scidb.org) initiative, which is developing a new open source data management system which extends the relational model: this would secure UK involvement in the development of this exciting new technology and aid its adoption by UK companies in domains (e.g. oil exploration, pharmaceuticals) facing similar data management and analysis scalability challenges.
Educators and the general public
WFAU has an established record in outreach, inherited from its previous incarnation as the UK Schmidt Telescope Unit (UKSTU) of the ROE. WFAU staff provide popular computer-based displays at the annual ROE Open Days, and these will be enhanced during the period of this grant through use of new technologies, such as Google Sky and Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope. These technologies could be developed for outreach purposes in two ways: (i) firstly, we could post online static KML files that users could upload into their Google Sky installation and view a guided tour of highlights of WFAU-curated sky survey datasets, with explanatory text for educators, providing an updated version of the widely-used teaching packs produced by UKSTU; (ii) for more serious amateur astronomers we could generate KML files dynamically from queries against our databases, so that they could interact with our data through the medium of Google Sky. By presenting astronomical data in a readily accessible format, using modern computational techniques, this could aid development of IT skills, as well as dissemination of information about astronomy.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Robert Mann (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Ferreira Lopes C
(2015)
The WFCAM multiwavelength Variable Star Catalog (Corrigendum)
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Ferreira Lopes C
(2016)
New insights into time series analysis I. Correlated observations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Ferreira Lopes C
(2015)
The WFCAM multiwavelength Variable Star Catalog
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lanzafame A
(2015)
Gaia -ESO Survey: Analysis of pre-main sequence stellar spectra
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Sacco G
(2014)
The Gaia -ESO Survey: processing FLAMES-UVES spectra
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Saito R
(2012)
VVV DR1: The first data release of the Milky Way bulge and southern plane from the near-infrared ESO public survey VISTA variables in the Vía Láctea
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Jackson R
(2015)
The Gaia -ESO Survey: Empirical determination of the precision of stellar radial velocities and projected rotation velocities
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Cross N
(2012)
The VISTA Science Archive
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lodieu N
(2013)
Probing the Upper Scorpius mass function in the planetary-mass regime?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lodieu N
(2012)
Astrometric and photometric initial mass functions from the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey - II. The Alpha Persei open cluster The a Per astrometric and photometric mass function
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kilkenny D
(2015)
The Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey - IV. Zone 3: Galactic latitudes -40° > b > -50°
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Campbell L
(2014)
The 6dF Galaxy Survey: Fundamental Plane data
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lodieu N
(2012)
Astrometric and photometric initial mass functions from the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey - I. The Pleiades? The Pleiades astrometric and photometric MF
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Jarvis M
(2013)
The VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) survey?
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Rice T
(2015)
NEAR-INFRARED VARIABILITY IN THE ORION NEBULA CLUSTER
in The Astronomical Journal
Winters J
(2014)
THE SOLAR NEIGHBORHOOD. XXXV. DISTANCES TO 1404 M DWARF SYSTEMS WITHIN 25 PC IN THE SOUTHERN SKY
in The Astronomical Journal
Finch C
(2012)
UCAC3 PROPER MOTION SURVEY. II. DISCOVERY OF NEW PROPER MOTION STARS IN UCAC3 WITH 0.?40 yr -1 > µ ? 0.?18 yr -1 BETWEEN DECLINATIONS -47° and 00°
in The Astrophysical Journal
Description | This grant funded development and operation of a number of major sky survey archives that have been used by astronomers throughout the world as the basis of their research. |
Exploitation Route | Our sky survey archives that have been used by astronomers throughout the world as the basis of their research. |
Sectors | Education |
Description | The sky survey archives supported by this grant were used in outreach activities. |
First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
Sector | Education |
Impact Types | Societal |
Description | FP7-SPACE-2013-1 |
Amount | £186,618 (GBP) |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 10/2013 |
End | 03/2017 |
Title | GES |
Description | The Gaia-ESO Spectroscopy survey Science Archive hosts all the data collected by the Gaia-ESO survey team, together with advanced products they have generated. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The GES archive forms the basis for all publications made by the Gaia-ESO consortium. |
URL | http://ges.roe.ac.uk |
Title | OSA |
Description | The OSA hosts data from the ATLAS and VPHAS+ surveys conducted with the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | This database forms the basis for much of the analysis undertaken by the ATLAS team. |
URL | http://osa.roe.ac.uk |
Title | VSA |
Description | The VISTA Science Archive hosts and publishes data from five of the six sky surveys being undertaken with the VISTA telescope. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2010 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | A press release (http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/news/milky-way-image-reveals-detail-billion-stars-27-03-12) associated with the VSA had more than 15,000 unique pageviews, with an average duration of nearly four minutes, while an image viewer linked from it had more than 189,000 unique visitors. |
URL | http://surveys.roe.ac.uk/vsa |
Title | WSA |
Description | The WFCAM Science Archive publishes sky survey data obtained using the WFCAM instrument on the UK Infrared Telescope, notably from the UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2006 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The UKIDSS home page records that 400 papers resulted from the survey up to the end of 2012, when they stopped counting. Several hundred more will have been published since then, and the great majority of UKIDSS papers will have involved using of the WFCAM Science Archive. |
URL | http://surveys.roe.ac.uk/wsa/index.html |
Description | ROE Open Days |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Type Of Presentation | Poster Presentation |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Poster displays and associated discussion of sky survey data archive featured in annual ROE open days. Posters seen by several hundred people on each of two open days per year, stimulating follow-up discussion with several dozen people each year, asking further questions about our work. Nil |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015,2016 |