AstroGrid Cardiff Workshop 27 June 2008

Workshop Aim

This short workshop will allow participants to gain knowledge of using the AstroGrid Virtual Observatory software (mainly VODesktop and python scripting) to help discover and work with astronomical data. The particpants will get a brief overview of AstroGrid, before spending afew hours in a hands-on session, where they will get to work through a number of examples. Help will be provided by AstroGrid 'tutors'.

Cardiff Workshop Agenda

Workshop Location

The workshop will be held in room N/0.06 of the Cardiff University Newport Road North site. Directions can be found here: http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/?page=contact . The entrance is in the Parade off West Grove off Newport Road (number 60 on the map, although it says 59)

Pre-Workshop Checklist

Pre-requistites for running AstroGrid software on your own laptop

AstroGrid Help Pages

Installation

• It will save time if you can pre-install the AstroGrid Desktop, Topcat and the Python egg (if wanted, see below), but we will help you on the day if necessary.

Help pages for all aspects of using AstroGrid During the hands-on session we will aim to work through a number of the worked examples contained within our on-line examples pages. Attendees will be able to work at their own pace, with AstroGrid tutors available to help out as required. We suggest that attendees have a look at the following help pages:

• Comprehensive AstroGrid help pages
• reference Help pages

The worked examples can be found at:

• Usage examples

and we suggest that you start with some of the simpler ones:

• Cone searches - in other words positional queries of catalogues;
• Hipparcos - working with this astrometric data;
• Data Access - an overview of data access.

One of the most-used desktop tools is TopCat, for visualising tabular data - thus, do launch TopCat and have a look at its functionality and the Quickstart Guide.

Python Scripting

Those of you familiar with scripting might like to try out the Python scripting side of AstroGrid:

• Python help pages: read this for help on installing and working with Python.
• Look at the end of that page for a tar file with example python scripts which you can run or edit.

Attendance

Local Network Information

Wireless Internet access

-- EduardoGonzalez - 10 Jun 2008

• cardiff-jun08.pdf: cardiff-jun08.pdf