The November 2009 issue of the IVOA Newsletter is now available at
http://ivoa.net/newsletter/. This biannual newsletter for astronomers is intended to highlight new capabilities of VO tools and technologies for doing astronomy research. It also lists recent papers, and upcoming events. Comments and feedback are encouraged; you may contact the editors at ivoa-news-editors@ivoa.net.
| November 2009 issue of the IVOA Newsletter | November 10, 2009 | 08:24 am |
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| Link | Posted in News | Tags: ivoa | |
| .Astronomy 2009 Call for Registration | September 21, 2009 | 08:41 am |
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This is the final call for registration for the .Astronomy 2009 meeting to be held in the Lorentz Center in Leiden from 30 Nov 2009 through 4 Dec 2009. The .Astronomy conference series explores the connection between astronomy and the Internet. More information about the meeting is available on the conference website http://dotastronomy.com/. Astronomy is facing a paradigm shift. The huge quantities of data that will be generated by a new generation of surveys and instruments require new ways of thinking. At the same time, an ever more connected world is bringing astronomy to the masses by the vast possibilities of the web, via blogs,podcasts, social networks and more. Google Sky and Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope have taken astronomy into the home with stunning elegance. Exciting citizen science projects enlist the general public into world-class astronomy research. Data mining, robotic telescopes and virtual observatories will soon takepetabytes of data to a global audience of professionals and amateurs. Communication and networking technologies are changing science, for both researchers and the public alike. In 2008, the first .Astronomy conference took place in Cardiff, to discuss the ideas and methods emerging in this new era and the way in which they present interesting and novel opportunities for both conducting and communicating astronomy. Themes and topics
An entire day of the workshop will be devoted to an “Astronomy Hack Day”, where developers can Workshop format We plan to have talks in the morning of every day, with the afternoon reserved for working break-out groups or discussion sessions. This means the number of “formal talks” will be quite limited, but everyone will have a chance to speak their mind. Each day will deal with one of the above themes, with the 5th day devoted to the Hack Day. Scientific organizing committee Dr. Alasdair Allan, University of Exeter (@aallan) .Astronomy and the International Year of Astronomy The United Nations proclaimed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) in celebration of the anniversary of Galileo Galilei’s first astronomical observations through a telescope. The vision of the IYA is to “help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery”. The internet has been instrumental in bringing the activities of the IYA to a huge public with blogs, podcasts andwebcasts. During the .Astronomy workshop we will review the success of these initiatives and discuss how to keep the momentum of the IYA into the coming years. This workshop is an official IYA2009 conference. |
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| Link | Posted in Events | Tags: .Astronomy, conferences, IYA | |
| Aladin Release 6 | September 8, 2009 | 08:30 am |
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The Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS) ispleased to announce Aladin release 6: Aladin is an interactive software sky atlas allowing the user to visualize digitized astronomical images, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases, and interactively access related data and information from the Simbad database, the VizieR service and other archives for all known sources in the field. The new release integrates the following new developments:
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| Link | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: aladin, ivoa, software | |
| Release of SAMPy 1.11.1 | September 8, 2009 | 08:28 am |
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Dear all. The PANDORA (“Programs for AstroNomical Data Organization Reduction and Analysis”) group at the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica in Milano, Italy, is pleased to announce the release of SAMPy 1.11.1 available at the PANDORA group site. SAMPy is a Python implementation of the Simple Application Messaging Protocol. This new release includes the following changes:
If you have any comment, bug notification, help request, etc. please contact the team by using the PANDORA site contact page. |
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| Link | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: ivoa, SAMPy, software | |
| New VOSpec 5.5 release | September 3, 2009 | 08:46 am |
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The ESA-VO Team is pleased to announce the release of VOSpec 5.5 available at: VOSpec is a tool able to handle Spectra in the VO context as well as providing analysis capabilities and easy integration of spectra coming from different data providers, wavelengths, and different metadata (e.g. units). This new release includes the following mayor features and improvements from V5.1:
Furthermore, improvements from version 4 include:
For further information (manual, versioning info, other access interfaces) please check the VOSpec webpage. |
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| Link | Posted in News | Tags: ivoa, software, vospec | |
| International Workshop on “High Performance Computing in Observational Astronomy: Requirements & Challenges | July 29, 2009 | 07:45 am |
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High Performance Computing in Observational Astronomy: Requirements and Challenges Poster: PDF The theme of this meeting will be to discuss computationally intensive techniques important for different branches of astronomy. These techniques are increasingly being applied and planned for data collection, real-time and off-line analysis, and interpretation of results. Examples of such techniques include, among many others, software correlation of interferometric signals, dynamic beam forming and interference rejection, adaptive optics control for multi-segment telescopes, coded mask image analysis, matched filtering of gravitational wave signal, deconvolution and foreground subtraction of CMB maps, automated transient search etc. Given the development and plans for large international astronomical facilities like the upgraded GMRT, eVLA, LOFAR, ASKAP, MeerKAT (and eventually the SKA) in radio, various new giant multi-segment mirror telescope projects in optical, new observatories like ASTROSAT in UV/x-ray, we feel that such a meeting will be well timed and will provide an appropriate forum for exchange of ideas and plans for handling the massive computing tasks associated with such large projects. In particular, we feel that participants from different wave band regimes will benefit by possible cross-fertilization of ideas. We expect significant participation from academia as well as the IT industry, and prominent researchers from both domains will be invited speakers at this meeting. |
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| Link | Posted in News | Tags: workshops | |
| TOPCAT, STILTS, & STIL updates | July 20, 2009 | 09:28 am |
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The following new minor releases were made on 17 July 2009: These releases contain minor enhancements, updates and bug fixes. Detailed information about the changes can be found at:
The UK’s AstroGrid project within which TOPCAT, STILTS and STIL have been supported, developed and maintained for the last three years has been terminated, and applications to fund a follow-on project for UK Virtual Observatory work have been unsuccessful. Attempts will be made to seek some other arrangement under which support for this software can continue, but as things stand it is likely that the author will no longer be available to work on it from around November 2009. The same applies to JSAMP. See http://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/~mbt/future.html for more details. |
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| Link | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: astrogrid, stil, stilts, topcat | |
| e-Infrastructure Survey | July 8, 2009 | 09:29 am |
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A group at the University of Chicago, Department of Sociology, is involved in a study of how networking, distributed databases, grid computing, etc., are affecting both software development and scientific research. The US National Virtual Observatory is of particular interest to them. They have developed a survey to help judge the impact of these new technologies, and I encourage you to take a few minutes to fill it out (they say it takes 20 minutes, but it is more like 5-10). Some of the language of the survey is pretty technical, but overall it is not too bad. They will share the results with the NVO project, and this could be helpful to our understanding of how to focus our energies in the future to make the VO more useful. So, please have a look. What follows is the invitation to participate from the survey leader at U. Chicago, and then there is a link to the survey itself. Thank you, |
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| Link | Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: survey | |
| ADASS 2009 Sapporo Registration Open | June 18, 2009 | 09:05 am |
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The organizing committee is pleased to announce the opening of registration for the 19th annual conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS). The conference will be held in Sapporo, Japan at the Renaissance Sapporo Hotel during 4-8 October 2009. The ADASS conference is held each year at a different hosting astronomical institution. The conference provides a forum for scientists and programmers concerned with algorithms, software and software systems employed in the acquisition, reduction, analysis, and dissemination of astronomical data. The program includes invited talks, contributed papers, display sessions, tutorials, and computer demonstrations, as well as special interest (”Birds of a Feather” or BOF) meetings. These activities aim to encourage communication between software specialists, scientists, and also to stimulate further development of astronomical software and systems. Participate in this exciting conference by submitting an oral or poster abstract, a demonstration, or a BoF proposal. Key topics for this year’s conference include but are not limited to:
As this is the first ADASS in Asia, proposals that deal with topics of special interest to Asia are encouraged. Details on the submission process can be found on the Conference website at http://www.adass.org/. Important Dates:
The Conference website will be updated regularly during the next few months to include information about the program, the current list of attendees, and the submitted abstracts. |
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| Link | Posted in Events | Tags: adass, conferences | |
| New Release of AstroGrid VODesktop Software | June 15, 2009 | 08:08 am |
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The AstroGrid project is pleased to announce the latest release of the AstroGrid VODesktop, version 1.2.3.1. This is a suite of desktop applications to enable astronomers to explore and bookmark resources from around the world, find data, store and share files in VOSpace, query databases, plot and manipulate tables, cross-match catalogs, and build and run scripts to automate sequences of tasks. Tools from other IVOA projects inter-operate with AstroGrid software, so you can also view and analyze images and spectra located in the VO. The latest version includes new features and improvements, including improved descriptive information (metadata) for searching and filtering resources, and a new Multi-Query capability for searching resources against a user-supplied list of positions, as well as for just one position at a time. There are also a number of bug fixes and internal technical improvements. AstroGrid Python remains at V1.04. The latest version of Topcat is V3.4-1, March 2009. Important changes are listed at http://www.astrogrid.org/wiki/ReleaseNotes . |
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| Link | Posted in News | Tags: astrogrid, ivoa, software | |

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