AstroGrid/ Imperial /UCL Workshop 20-22 March 2006

AstroGrid, Imperial College and UCL are holding a three day workshop to introduce the London astronomy research community to the potential of emerging Virtual Observatory capabilities in supporting scientific research.

This is being kindly hosted at Imperial College in the Blackett Lab, room 539 (see South Kensington Campus).

If you need accomodation book early - for local recommendations see Imperial College accomodation information or email accommodationlink@imperial.ac.uk .

Agenda

The workshop agenda is as follows. On Monday, the practical introductory talks will include time for you to try out the application being demonstrated.

Science Projects

We will divide into 4 groups to work on projects based on science goals. These should be specific problems which can be tackled using AstroGrid. Each group will be supported by an AstroGrid developer and a scientist. We will make individual pages once the topics are decided.

Suggested subject areas:

A Cosmic Topologies

TopologiesImperialGroupA

1. Search for catalogued objects of known large redshift (test on small sample first?)
2. Crossmatch, remove duplicates (Crossmatch tool? TopCat?)
3. Classify (SIMBAD? ) (quasar, galaxy, grb, etc.)
4. Calculate the proper distance between each pair of objects in a class (assuming LCDM) and present as a histogram, one for each class of object. Peaks in the histograms would indicate the unit cell size of the universe.

The more difficult part of the project would be to simulate what such histograms should look like in given topolgies. We'd need to take into account the shape of each survey, their depths and sensitivities, and use a few different topolgies.

Could also use Photometric Redshift tools

B Stellar

StellarProjectImperialGroupB

Identification of stars/protostellar objects using techniques such as

1. Plotting colour-colour maps
2. Plotting SEDS
3. Plotting stellar evolution models onto colour-colour maps

leading to

• Produce spectral-index maps showing the stellar and molecular cloud evolutionary state of the Gould Belt as a function of Galactic longitude.

Data: 2MASS IRAS ISOGAL USNO BRI etc. (may need to convert between photometric systems).

Regions: Orion A and B; Oph; Scorpius; Serpens; Lupus; CrA^?; IC5146; Tau-Aur; Perseus; Pipe; Cepheus

C What is the relationship between FIR emission from elliptical galaxies and their AGN activity?

FIREllipticalsGroupC

1. Identify all elliptical galaxies with M_B>-18 and v<3000 km/s
2. Obtain the far-infrared (20 micron < wavelength < 200 micron) flux densities for these galaxies
3. Obtain the optical identification of the AGN activity (Seyfert, LINER, HII, transition object, or absorption system) for these galaxies.
4. Compare galaxies of different AGN activities with integrated far-infrared fluxes.

Can all this be done from existing catalogues or do you need to classify objects in images, examine spectra etc.? All doable using VO tools but spectral classification etc. might have to be manual.

Might need selective catalogue extraction using NED or Vizier/SIMBAD.

D Extended search for Extremely Red Objects

ExtremelyRedObjectsImperialGroupD

Antonis has recently produced a list of the brightest ERO (extremely red objects) in the 5500 sq deg. region of the SDSS DR3 data release, by matching SDSS optical data to 2MASS IR data. R-K > 5 is the defining ERO characteristic, and the addition of J-K colours allows some level of classification. 21 EROs have been found in the DR3 data. Followup of these has so far found dusty AGNs at z~0.3-0.8 and one probably lensed dusty quasar at z=2.2.

We propose to expand the sky region covered by this work using:

1. SDSS DR4 which doubles the Sloan area covered to 11000 sq deg.
2. USNO photometric/astrometric survey.
   • check reliability by cross referencing the USNO results with the SDSS DR3 and DR4 results.

If this is all catalogue based, it should be accessible via AstroScope (also SDSS images). USNOB and 2MASS are also accessible via ADQL which allows mroe complex queries or via the Colour Cutter. Manipulation (e.g. cross-matching, making colours) can be done using TopCat or by scripting.

Help

The AstroGrid workbench has Help links built-in. These are not complete, unfortunately, but some pre-publication pages are available:

• ApplicationLauncherHelp
• QueryBuilderHelp
• LookoutHelp
• ColourCutterHelp
• RegistryHelp

• run-sdss.py.txt: Python script to query SDSS image server

Feedback: Q+A Session and Issues

• Q + A session & Issues

Post Workshop

• Post Workshop

Pre-Workshop checklist

If possible, those with access to laptop computers should aim to bring those, and ensure that you have the following installed:

• Install Java JDK 1.4 DOWNLOAD or 1.5 DOWNLOAD
• Install Python (2.4 preferred) Note 1: on Linux systems it might be possible to install a binary kit using your distros package management system (rpm, yum, apt-get, urpmi etc) Note 2: OS X probably has the above installed by default - check first (2a: It has Python 2.3, not 2.4; is that enough? If not, 2.4 can be downloaded from here.)

In principle, AstroGrid sowftware will work with Linux, XP or Mac OSX

We'll be setting up a wiki username account for all attendees before the meeting, please use http://wiki.astrogrid.org/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiRegistration to set your password.

We'll also be giving all attendees an astrogrid user account - again details via email. We encourage all to have a quick try at entering the system - try launching the workbench from http://software.astrogrid.org/userdocs/workbench.html

Help pages for using AstroGrid are at http://software.astrogrid.org/userdocs/index.html

Useful Tools

• Aladin: http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/ Select version 3.6 prototype version: Aladin-proto.jnlp

Networking

Glossary:

A few buzzwords you might hear during the workshop ...

• VOQL: Virtual Observatory Query Language
• VOTable: a tabular data exchange standard
• DAL: Data Access Layer
• SIA: Simple Image Access
• SSA: Simple Spectral Access
• UCD: Uniform Content Descriptor

Find lots more at http://www.ivoa.net !

Attendance

Workshop Dinner

The workshop dinner will be held at Da Mario Restaurant at 15 GLOUCESTER ROAD - LONDON SW7 4PP, 19.00 on Tues 21 March 2006.