AG-SAG - Full Meeting #10

Date and Location: ICC, Durham 28 Sep 2006, 10.00-16.00

Supporting Paperwork:

the latest workbench (2006.3 rc3) to try out is at http://software.astrogrid.org/jnlp/workbench/workbench.jnlp

Agenda

Present:

• Carlton Baugh (CB)
• NicholasWalton (NW) (AstroGrid)
• SilviaDalla (SD) (AstroGrid)
• JeremyYates (JY)
• AndrewJaffe (AJ) (by phone)
• EduardoGonzalez (EG) (AstroGrid)
• BillChaplin (BC)
• GuyRixon (GR) (AstroGrid)

Apologies

• Lyndsay Fletcher (LF)
• Christian Knigge (KN)
• SebOliver (SO)
• Steve Maddox
• Tom Marsh (TM)
• Mike Pinnock (MP)
• Nial Tanvir (NT)
• KeithNoddle (KN) (Astrogrid)
• AnitaRichards (AMSR) (AstroGrid)

Notes of Meeting

Review of June 06 meeting minutes + issues arising from AGOC July 06

See project scientist slides.

NW: User satisfaction survey will be carried out within the next month.

NW: Datasets: SDSS DR5 is required now. There has been progress on UKIDSS and authentication (presentation by Guy Rixon at this meeting). Document on hardware requirements is being prepared and will be forwarded to AGSAG.

AJ: AGOC was pleased with Tool Call as a way for the project to interact with the community.

NW: Minutes of AGOC and AG report have been uploaded to this wiki page. Next meeting of AGOC: 7 February Leicester.

AG3 proposal

AJ: A letter of support for the AG3 proposal was provided by AGSAG. Also a letter from other VO projects including NVO etc. (see attached AG3 proposal (in the appendix)).

NW: PPRP visiting panel 7 November, Swindon. Chair: Iain Steel. From AGSAG: Christian Knigge. Results of review process are expected around Easter 2007.

JY: The AG3 proposal seems well balanced. Requested effort is appropriate.

JY: Asks whether it would be good for a few people from SAG to be at the visiting panel - ACTION NAW - organise who will attend from SAG.

Update on AstroGrid development through to end 2006

Pages 5-6 of project scientist slides.

NW: New workbench release much more user friendly. The layout of the Workbench is now stable. The portal is gone. Quite a lot more datasets are now available. There needs to be a push on getting more applications.

GR: New applications are becoming available eg mosaic application. Paris observatory have been doing a lot on this recently.

Feedback on IAU Special session

NW: IAU VO Special Session went well. All talks available on this web page: http://www.ivoa.net/pub/VOScienceIAUPrague/programme/index.html

NW: Quite a few talks on science using Astrogrid. Many people visited the Astrogrid demo stand. Collaboration with Caltech started on mosaic application, now to be accessed as CEA application. Also we are working with them on VOSpace. Canadian VO are keen on installing DSAs on their archive and using workflows.

Astrogrid Cycle 4 plans

See: http://wiki.astrogrid.org/pub/Astrogrid/AstroGrid2Planning/C4-plan-V1.htm

Presentation on technical developments - see slides - Guy Rixon

GR: New bugteam approach. Major refurbishment of DSA is taking place. We will replace JES with Taverna - currently Taverna is client side, they are working on a new version with asynchronous mode of operation. Standard for VOSpace is emerging. Registry has been optimised and is faster.

Link for Taverna tests (includes movies): http://wiki.astrogrid.org/bin/view/Astrogrid/VoWorkflowsWithTaverna

GR: We need a way round the problems with JES while we move to Taverna. One option is to convert current wfs to Python scripts.

JY: Taverna looks interesting - the approach using 'building blocks' will suit the young astronomers like postgrad students.

GR: New component DSA/SIAP: makes it easy for groups that have data to publish images.

AJ: Would this be hosted on an astronomer's PC?

GR: It would need to be a web service. It could be a departmental web service. The code would be able to generate the registration. You could have the catalogue at the data center and the URL pointing to a user's data store.

AJ: Having access control would make it very useful.

GR: There is also work going on on publishing time-series. STAP protocol - not clear if SSAP will be enough for time queries required by solar/STP.

SD: It would be very useful for people to have an easy way to publish time series data, in a similar way to the software for publishing images described by Guy.

BC and AJ: Confirm that it would be very useful to make it easy for people to publish their own data. Both images and time-series.

BC: At the moment with DSA we are not finding it easy to publish our time-series data.

GR: Security: we can now secure our web services in the sense that the workbench can make a secure call to a service such as a DSA or a CEA application. We cannot currently secure image services or calls to JES. There is now an internal certificate authority.

See slides for discussion of IVOA work.

NW: VOSpace standard will allow plugging in SRB, which is very robust.

Solar/STP services update

SD presented Solar B update slides provided by Elizabeth Auden.

JY and BC: Stress that provision of Solar-B data via astrogrid DSA and Helioscope is very good news.

Update on VOTech stage 4

See http://wiki.eurovotech.org/twiki/bin/view/VOTech/StageFourPlanningMeetings

and:

http://wiki.eurovotech.org/twiki/pub/VOTech/StageFourPlanningMeetings/DSmeetingSep2006_summary.pdf

Increasing the use of the Astrogrid system

CB: Feedback from Durham workshop: Positive reaction from the Durham group, a lot of people took part. It raised awareness of what Astrogrid is doing. Workshops are a very good idea.

NW: In the Durham workshop, it was good that everybody turned up for the plenary session. The format of the workshop is working well.

BC: The Astrogrid Birmingham/Warwick workshop will take place on 10-11 Oct. Quite a lot of interest from these groups, about 30 people registered.

NW: Upcoming workshops: Oxford will be a mixed science+technical workshop organised together with RADIONET. There will be a Liverpool workshop in December. Other upcoming workshops: Cardiff, Leicester (both astro and stp), Cambridge, UCL+Hertsfordshire.

NW: Current number of users is about 400, of which 300 UK. The potential number of users in the UK is 2000.

JY: At UCL we have a postdoc working on science using Astrogrid - he also setup an astrogrid server at UCL. Plans are to run a UCL community. Interests are photometric redshifts, Gould belt, SEDs and spectroscopy. Local Astrogrid server as a way to encourage groups to get involved with the project.

NW: Mark Taylor is working on some spectral fitting tools.

Update on SAG science cases

JY: Gould Belt case is in progress. Meeting with Anita in Jodrell Bank will take place soon. See also project scientist slides on this science case.

User survey

NW shows draft of the user survey. To be implemented as web survey. Also it would be useful to interview a few selected users. The survey will also ask users which other VO systems they have tried in addition to AG.

Actions: Make into a web form. Email Astrocommunity, solar physics newsletter, mist newsletter.

Upcoming meetings:

• AG Consortium Meeting, 14-15 December, MSSL - SAG are invited to take part.

• Next SAG meeting: Monday 5 February, UCL.

Expenses

Claims for expenses can be made on the Leicester Expenses Claim Form (pdf). Please download, fill in, attach receipts (Leics will reject claims without receipts unless 'no receipt' is explicitly stated against an item), and send to:

Janet Bee
University of Leicester,
Dept of Physics & Astronomy,
University Road,
Leicester
LE1 7RH

Please mark the Claim as 'AstroGrid: Science Advisory Group Meeting'

Travel and Accomodation

Full travel details to the ICC at http://icc.dur.ac.uk/index.php?content=Contacts/Zoom

For those arriving by train, the easiest thing is to get a taxi from the station. Car parking is a mess at the moment due to the construction of a new lecture theatre -- anyone planning to travel by car should let Carlton Baugh know and he will give them special instructions.

The meeting will be in OC304 on the top floor of The Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics (which is the ICC). The room has a interactive whiteboard which can be hooked up to laptops as a projector.

Wireless and Network Connections

There will be wireless available with a password on the day.