Quarterly Report
JanuaryMarch 2002
Building the Framework for
the National Virtual Observatory
NSF Cooperative Agreement
AST0122449
Quarterly Report, AST0122449
Jan-Mar 2002
1 Management ................................................................................................................ 2
2 Data Models ................................................................................................................ 4
3 Metadata Standards ..................................................................................................... 5
4 Systems Architecture .................................................................................................. 8
5 Data Access/Resource Layer .................................................................................... 10
6 NVO Services ........................................................................................................... 11
7 Service/Data Provider Implementation and Integration ........................................... 11
8 Portals and Workbenches .......................................................................................... 12
9 Test-Bed .................................................................................................................... 12
10
Science Prototypes ................................................................................................ 13
11
Outreach and Education ........................................................................................ 13
Activities by Organization ................................................................................................ 14
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Building the Framework for the National Virtual Observatory
NSF Cooperative Agreement AST0122449
Quarterly Report
Period covered by this report:
Submitted by:
1 January - 31 March 2002
Dr. Robert Hanisch (STScI), Project Manager
Highlights: This is the first quarter of substantive work on the NVO development
project, following an initial quarter devoted primarily to organization issues. Following
our management plan, work was focused in several key areas:
 Metadata Standards. A Metadata Working Group was constituted and weekly
telecons were held. The group is working on identifying the primary metadata
concepts needed to identify NVO services, support NVO queries, and tag NVO
responses. The MWG has initiated a simple demonstration project, a Cone Search
(right ascension, declination, search radius), to help elucidate many aspects of NVO
interoperability.
 Science Demonstrations. Discussions have begun, aimed at identifying the initial
science projects we will use for our January 2003 demonstrations. These will be
finalized in a team meeting in mid-April.
 System Architecture. Various aspects of the NVO system architecture, from its use
of the emerging Grid technologies to more NVO-specific requirements, are being
analyzed and discussed. Investigations are underway into the currently available
tools for managing distributed computation.
 Education and Public Outreach. We began to develop partnerships with groups who
will be able to help us capitalize on NVO capabilities for education and public
outreach purposes.
The senior management team for the project was altered in order to replace the
unanticipated retirement of CoPI Paul Messina (Caltech). Roy Williams (Caltech)
replaces Messina as CoPI, and the Executive Committee has been augmented with
George Helou (IPAC) and Reagan Moore (SDSC/UCSD).
A number of team members supported the NASA-NSF NVO Science Definition Team
efforts, culminating in a report being completed at the end of the quarter. The report will
be presented to the agencies on April 11.
International collaboration has been strong, with regular telecons among the leadership of
the NVO, AVO, and AstroGrid projects. Representatives from all projects met to discuss
metadata standards at a meeting in Strasbourg, France, in late January, and two NVO
project members attended the AVO Science Working Group meeting in February. The
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three project teams are working on a joint international VO roadmap, to be presented at
the June international VO conference in Garching, Germany.
Issues and Concerns: Negotiations between JHU’s Sponsored Programs Office and CoI
organizations have taken longer than expected in getting subawards issued. Different
financial regulations among the participating organizations (universities, non-profit, and
for-profit organizations) have resulted in the need to tailor the language in each
subaward. In most cases, however, Letters of Intent have permitted work to proceed.
Activities by WBS
1
Management
In January, CoPI Paul Messina announced his retirement from Caltech and his intention
to remove himself from most of his project activities, including from the NVO. We are
grateful for Paul’s contributions to this effort, in particular in bringing about a strong
astronomy/IT partnership. Paul’s retirement led to several changes in the senior
management of the project:
 Roy Williams, also of Caltech/CACR, has replaced Paul as CoPI.
 The Executive Committee has been augmented with George Helou (director of IPAC)
and Reagan Moore (UCSD/SDSC).
We gave formal notification to NSF of these changes via Fastlane.
We also proposed the membership of an external advisory committee to NSF, and began
recruiting people following NSF review and approval.
The Executive Committee also reviewed additional proposals for a project logo; the
current design is shown on the cover of this report.
1.1 Science Oversight (Executive Committee)
Highlights: Project team members have participated in the NASA-NSF Science
Definition Team and European AVO Science Working Group. The NVO PI, CoPI, and
Project Manager are working closely with their counterparts in the AVO and AstroGrid
projects to develop a common VO roadmap.
Status: A number of the members of the project team continued their participation in the
joint NASA-NSF NVO Science Definition Team (Djorgovski, chair; Alcock, De Young,
Helou, Kent, Szalay, White, Brunner, Fabbiano, Gray, Hanisch, Madore, McGlynn, and
Schreier). The SDT held a final face-to-face meeting on March 27 in Pasadena, and the
final version of the report was completed in the following several days.
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We continued to work with the two European VO initiatives, AVO and AstroGrid, to
develop common milestones, minimize duplication of effort, and assure interoperability.
We have established ~bimonthly management telecons to discuss common goals and
share progress. We prepared an abstract for the June AAS meeting special session on
NVO describing the nature of the international collaboration. The authors are F. Genova
(CDS), P. Benvenuti (ST-ECF/ESA), D. De Young (NOAO), R. Hanisch (STScI), A.
Lawrence (ROE), A. Linde (U. Leicester), P. Quinn (ESO), A. Szalay (JHU), N. Walton
(IoA/Cambridge), and R. Williams (Caltech). We also worked on a first draft of a
roadmap for an international virtual observatory (to be announced at the June virtual
observatory conference in Garching, Germany).
Team members Hanisch and Fabbiano attended the first meeting of the European
Astrophysical Virtual Observatory Science Working Group (Feb 7, Garching, Germany).
Project Director and PI Szalay gave a talk about the NVO in Brazil at the Grid Workshop
(Feb 7).
Within the project we are forming a Science Working Group. The SWG will be chaired
by the Project Scientist, Dave De Young, and will focus on science requirements and
evaluation. It will address all aspects of the NVO, from data discovery to crosscorrelation to theory.
We are planning our second full team meeting in Tucson, April 16-17, 2002. The goal
for this meeting will be to finalize the number and scope of the initial science
demonstrations scheduled for January 2003, and to fully understand their implications for
the underlying system architecture and metadata standards development.
1.2 Technical Oversight (Executive Committee)
Highlights: For this first quarter, we have been concentrating on encouraging community
support for the protocols and standards that will become NVO exchange mechanisms.
We have international agreement on an XML standard (VOTable) for exchanging
astronomical tables. We are building support for a means to publish services, together
with a rudimentary directory. Emphasis is not on the sophistication of the software and
interfaces, but on getting wide support from the community. We have a web site
(http://us-vo.org/) with mailing lists, active discussion groups (http://archive.us-vo.org/)
and document repository.
Issues and Concerns: At the moment, each group codes the exchange as they feel
comfortable, with the idea involvement and buy-in will be maximized this way. We will
ask some of these groups to upgrade their code to documented and precise software in
2002Q2.
Status: We have formed two technical working groups: the Metadata Working Group
(chaired by Ray Plante) and the Systems Architecture Working Group (chaired by
Reagan Moore). The MWG began work in earnest this quarter, holding weekly telecons
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and setting up a web site (http://www.us-vo.org/metadata/). Meeting agendas are
distributed in advance, e-mail discussions are archived, and minutes are kept for each
telecon. The SAWG is just getting started as this quarter comes to a close, though
informal discussions among team members have been going on for the duration of the
period.
1.3 Project and Budget Oversight (Executive Committee)
Highlights: An initial project schedule has been developed, derived from the project
management plan.
Issues and Concerns: Negotiations between JHU’s Sponsored Programs Office and CoI
organizations have taken longer than expected in getting subawards issued. Different
financial regulations among the participating organizations (universities, non-profit, and
for-profit organizations) have resulted in the need to tailor the language in each
subaward. In most cases, however, Letters of Intent have permitted work to proceed.
Status: Work has continued in the JHU Sponsored Programs office to place all
subawards. This has ended up taking considerably more time and effort than anticipated,
as many organizations questioned some of the standard language of both JHU’s and
NSF’s terms and conditions. This has resulted in negotiation on virtually every
subaward. JHU was able to issue Letters of Intent to all organizations, allowing work to
begin at most sites. Some organizations have policies that prohibit making hiring
commitments based only on a Letter of Intent, however, and this has led to some delays
in getting the project fully up to speed.
A budget analyst began work at JHU in January, tasked specifically to support the
financial reporting activities of the project.
We have completed an initial project-wide schedule based on the management plan.
Level-2 WBS leaders have been given copies of their portions of the schedule to assist
them in coordinating the work in their areas. The schedule has over 1100 elements,
however, and in the process of mapping from the management plan to the schedule we
discovered some WBS elements that overlap considerably in content. In the coming
quarter we will be looking into ways to simplify the WBS structure and condense the
schedule to a point where it is a more pragmatic management tool.
The Executive Committee has been meeting weekly via telecon.
2
Data Models
2.1 Data Models / Data Model Architecture (McDowell, SAO)
Highlights: We established a mailing list for data model discussions and began work on
proposed nomenclature. J. McDowell visited Strasbourg for the Opticon meeting and
held discussions with M. Louys and F. Genova to establish a collaboration with the AVO
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data model effort.
Status: The SAO group has begun modeling existing datasets and elaborating the
possible components of the data model. A detailed comparison of the CDS Aladdin
image archive model and the CXC X-ray data model was carried out and distributed to
the team to stimulate discussion.
2.2 Data Models / Data Types (McDowell, SAO)
Highlights: We began work on the Image (2.2.1) and Catalog (2.2.5) data models in this
reporting period. U. Penn began work on Time Series (2.2.2), including preliminary
designs for a web-based service for micro-lensing light-curve data and a new FITS-based
light-curve standard.
Issues and Concerns: We are reviewing the need for the preliminary version of the
Catalog data model; it may be better to delay this until the overall architecture is mature.
Status: We have established that both images and catalogs have many common
attributes; the information content of the CDS catalog description file is closely matched
by the information content required to describe image axes. Our investigations
emphasize the need to support, at a fundamental level, mosaiced images such as those
made by HST and modern ground based imagers.
2.3 Data Models / Data Associations (McDowell, SAO)
Highlights: No significant progress so far made (or scheduled) in this WBS.
Status: During the Strasbourg discussions we did address issues of data quality (WBS
2.3.4) as an important component of the VO that should eventually be supported at the
level of datasets, calibration quantities, and individual data pixels.
3
Metadata Standards
3.1 Metadata Standards / Basic Profile Elements (Rots, SAO)
Highlights: A. Rots attended the Opticon Archive Interoperability meeting in Strasbourg,
in January, and had additional discussion with the staff at CDS. This was very useful in
forging a degree of consensus on several issues, in particular the use of the VOTable
design.
The work on coordinate systems has progressed considerably this quarter and the design
is being translated into XML DTD.
We have initiated a discussion of potential NVO defined metadata for time series data
(see WBS 2.2). Most of this preliminary work concentrates on the issues of data
provenance, especially in federated time series databases.
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Issues and Concerns: The main concern is that the coordinate metadata definitions really
need to be included in the VOTable from the beginning. The danger is that the VOTable
design becomes incompatible with a comprehensive temporal-spatial coordinate
definition.
Status: The main emphasis has been on the first two elements of this section: time (3.1.1)
and space (3.1.2). The metadata definition is in solid draft form, though few comments
have been received. What needs to be done is translation into XML DTD for the
VOTable. That has required familiarizing myself with XML. At this point, I expect the
first DTD draft to become available during the first week of April. Spectral (3.1.3),
parameters (3.1.4), and authorization (3.1.7) will be next, most likely. In addition, work
will need to be done on tying in the UCDs.
3.2 Specific Profile Implementations (McGlynn, USRA/HEASARC)
Highlights: Substantial work was performed by several organizations to describe the
metadata requirements associated with particular tasks. These have helped to organize
the overall metadata structure that will be used throughout the VO.
Using a preliminary version of the agreed VOTable document, multiple archive sites
implemented data retrieval in VOTable format and began providing catalog services
using this standardized format.
Initial profiles for catalog, archive and bibliographic services were sent out for review by
several participating institutions.
Status: The image data model proposal put out by J. McDowell was reviewed and
commented upon. Development of metadata to support images will be coordinated with
the data model efforts and begin Q2, 2002.
Substantial support was provided in the development the VOTable format for the
interchange of data. Since VOTables are explicitly intended to encapsulate information
derived from astronomical catalogs, the structure of VOTables is intimately
associated with that .
In collaboration with several other archive sites, preliminary profiles for catalog,
data and bibliographic services have been defined and circulated. These profiles
are intended to be used to support linking of existing services.
3.3 Metadata Representations and Encoding (Plante, UIUC/NCSA)
Highlights: Roy Williams (SDSC) and Francois Ochsenbein (CDS/AVO) have been
leading the development of the VOTable standard. They released version 0.94 for
comment. The VOTable plays a critical role in our first year prototypes as the standard
format for exchanging query results. Williams, Bob Hanisch (STScI), and Alex Szalay
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(JHU) drew up a prototype service description profile to be used as part of the Cone
Search demo (see WBS 3.4). Ray Plante (NCSA), in collaboration with the Metadata
Working Group, is leading research on a general metadata framework. This has included
analysis of scientific concepts, research on Internet standards (XML Schema, WSDL,
etc.), and development of a standard development roadmap.
Issues and Concerns: Among the major topics of discussion in the VOTable standard
development is the expression of queries in VOTable syntax; in particular, whether this
should be addressed in the current standard. More generally, development in this area is
proceeding down two paths simultaneously: a rapid prototyping effort for supporting
first year demonstrations, and a longer-term effort for a general framework. One
challenge in these pursuits is discerning what issues to address as part of the rapid
prototyping and which to save for the longer-term effort.
Status: VOTable v0.94 is now under active discussion. A release of v1.0 is targeted for
April 15, 2002. Long-term research on the metadata framework is ongoing. A white
paper outlining major goals and technologies is planned for completion in June.
3.4 Profile Applications (Plante, UIUC/NCSA)
Highlights: As part of a first-year prototype demo, Roy Williams, Bob Hanisch, and
Alex Szalay developed a specification for a “Cone Search” demo for gathering
information associated with circular regions on the sky from distributed catalogs. This
specification has been implemented for several data services, and cross-correlation
applications are now being developed by members of the Metadata Working Group to
make use of the results. Cross-correlation applications are now being developed that
operate on results from such queries.
Issues and Concerns: Implementations of the Cone Search have revealed various
ambiguities (e.g. use of ID_MAIN UCD) in the specification that are being addressed.
We expect that the service description file will need to be expanded for the immediate
purposes of the demo, and that the demo will need to be recast once a general metadata
framework is established.
Status: The Cone Search specification has been implemented for about a dozen data
resources by members of the Metadata Working Group:
 HEASARC/McGlynn: Four high-energy related catalogs
 VirtualSky/Williams: Messier, DPOSS, and Yale Bright Star Catalogs
 ADIL/Plante: image holdings (targeted observations)
 STScI/O'Mullane: GSC1, GSC2, Hipparcos, Tyco catalogs
These services accept queries based on sky position and radius, and they return matched
records as a VOTable.
Williams, McGlynn, and Szalay are all working on cross-correlation applications that
make use of results from compliant services. Szalay implemented a Profile Registration
service for the Cone Search prototype based on WSDL. A working demo incorporating
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service discovery, distributed cone search queries, and cross-correlation of results is
planned for June.
3.5 Metadata Standards / Relationships (Rots, SAO)
Status: No work scheduled for this quarter.
3.6 Metadata APIs (Plante, UIUC/NCSA)
Highlights: The Cone Search Demo (see WBS 3.4) includes a specification for a query
(based on a URL CGI template) and responses (using VOTable). R. Plante developed a
prototype Perl module for writing VOTable documents.
Issues and Concerns: There has been some discussion of what Cone Search response
records are meant to represent; it is expected that this will need to be captured in the
service description profile. Some of the challenges for developing a configuration tool
that helps data providers conform to a specification like the Cone Search are being
identified.
Status: See WBS 3.4.
4
Systems Architecture
4.1 System Design (Moore, SDSC)
Highlights: We conducted multiple exchanges of viewpoints with the participating
institutions, principally Caltech (Roy Williams and John Good), and USC (Ewa Deelman
and Carl Kesselman). We identified three types of infrastructure as primary components
of the NVO architecture for researcher access: Web-based service interfaces, a request
management environment for accessing current survey services, and grid-based services
for large-scale analyses. We generated a report describing a first pass at a system
architecture that integrates the access environment with collection management and grid
technology. Finally, we started testing of this approach on the Teragrid resources at
SDSC.
Issues and Concerns: We have initiated a working group for review of the architecture
components, and sought feedback on the participation of each member in the preparation
of the required design documents. We need mechanisms for obtaining feedback from
each of the surveys that are participating in the NVO to ensure that their data collections
and services will be accessible. We also need mechanisms for feedback from the other
working groups that are selecting data access protocols, defining web services, and
defining collection attributes. Data access protocols are closely tied to the data grid
architecture, the web services impact the choice of service description language, and the
collection attribute selection impacts the need for building knowledge management
repositories into the system architecture.
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Status: 4.1.1 – We are pursuing two approaches to the system level requirements
definition, one based on the requirements to support existing services, and a second based
on an engineering estimate of the capabilities that will be available on the Teragrid. We
are illustrating the second approach by planning (with John Good) a background
normalization of the 2MASS collection (10-TBs of images). The goal is to provide this
type of analysis as a typical computation taking one hour on the Teragrid.
4.1.2 and 4.1.3 – The first specification of component requirements is based upon the
emerging grid execution environments and the existing production data grids, augmented
by web services systems.
4.1.4 – We have developed an implementation of a logical name space that supports
registration of digital entities from multiple sites and data collections. We designed the
system to meet the requirements that have emerged from the Global Grid Forum
assessment of data grids, support for digital library collection building, and support for
persistent archives archival processes. We expect to test this logical name space against
the analyses of the 2MASS collection. We will need to demonstrate that this logical
name space can be used to register services, as well as files, URLs, databases, and
database command sequences.
4.2 Interface Definition (Williams, CACR)
Highlights: Initial Cone Search prototype project has been initiated and some 12 services
are already available.
Issues and Concerns: Profiles and their management and delivery will be a major part of
the NVO framework, and we will next begin to construct an architecture that allows
object inheritance and interface definitions for profiles. For example, a profile for a
positional cross-match service can be extended to build a profile for a positional/color
cross-match service.
Status: We have brought up a simple example of what it means to publish to the
Virtual Observatory, by building a specification of a "Cone Search" service and building
community support for it. This pilot scheme demonstrates the publication paradigm
through specification of a web service. Each service is defined by a profile, containing
information about how to form a request to the service, and the meaning of the results.
For the pilot, we are asking the community to build services whose request is a disk on
the sky, and whose response is a collection of points located on the sky that may be
stars or any other sky-located data records.
4.3 Network Requirements (Williams, CACR)
Status: Work not scheduled until late in CY2002.
4.4 Computational Requirements (Williams, CACR)
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Status: Work not scheduled until late in CY2002.
4.5 Security Requirements (Kesselman, USC)
Highlights: We have initiated a security requirements study to determine the security
requirements of the astronomy databases.
Issues and Concerns: We need to understand what are the current security solutions used
in the databases. We will refine our understanding in terms of what operations are
performed on the data sets, at what level of granularity are the access controls set: at a
table level in the database, based on attribute value etc.
Status: We have formed a security requirements working group, which includes
members working with the application databases as well as Globus security experts. The
requirement gathering is in its initial stage of formulating the necessary questions.
5
Data Access/Resource Layer
5.1 Resource and Information Discovery (Szalay, JHU)
Status: JHU is preparing the first draft for the HTM enhancements for spatial queries.
5.2 Data Access Mechanisms (Kesselman, USC)
Status: Work not scheduled until CY2002 Q4.
5.3 Data Access Protocols (Williams, CACR)
Status: JHU has successfully built a SOAP-based prototype service for catalog crossmatching.
5.4 Data Access Portals (Tody, NOAO)
Status: Our efforts thus far have focused on two areas: the overall NVO system
architecture and how the data access portal will fit into this, and trying to come up with a
good first year prototype emphasizing collaboration on uniform interfaces as well as
basic functionality for image access.
An effort has begun within the system architecture group to identify the major services to
be provided by NVO and how these interact. The data access portal will be one of these
services, and cannot be fully defined until the NVO system architecture is more fully
developed. We are evaluating how the data access portal will interact with other
components of the NVO framework, in particular the NVO testbed for large-scale
computation and the Grid services (SRB+MCAT, Globus, etc.) for bulk data
manipulation and distributed computation. We are also working to define how the data
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access portal differs from related services such as the Web portal and the request
management environment.
We have initiated discussions with the science prototypes, metadata, and system
architecture groups to try to define a first-year prototype for data access. This would
build upon the work being done by the metadata group for structured queries (VOTable
etc.), extending it to provide access to image data.
6
NVO Services
6.1 Computational Services (Berriman, IRSA)
Status: We are writing Software Management plans for the Image Mosaic Service, which
we now call MONTAGE (Mosaics On the TerAgrid Express). We have drafted software
requirements, and set up a User Advisory Board to provide feedback on Science Use
Cases. We have developed requirements for the scaleable version of Psearch.
6.2 Computational Resource Management (Moore/SDSC)
Highlights: Owing to complementary work/resources in the Teragrid project, activities in
this area have begun more than a year ahead of schedule.
Issues and Concerns: The management of computational resources will be governed by
the grid technologies that are implemented. Thus the explicit management capabilities are
governed by the choice of technologies for computational request planning,
authentication, data storage, and virtual data. These technologies are being implemented
in the NSF Teragrid based upon the NSF National Middleware Initiative.
Status: 6.2.4 Virtual Data – SDSC has implemented a catalog for virtual data products.
The catalog is based on the Storage Resource Broker and Metadata Catalog. The major
issues are the development of NVO catalog attributes that will allow the discovery of
derived data products by parameters appropriate for the NVO community. This is turn
will depend upon the results of the attribute specification working group.
7
Service/Data Provider Implementation and Integration
7.1 Service/Data Provider Implementation (Hanisch/STScI)
Status: No work scheduled this quarter. Service and data providers are participating in
the metadata standards discussions and are investigating prototypes, e.g., via the Cone
Search servers described in WBS 3.4.
7.2 Service/Data Provider Integration (Hanisch/STScI)
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Status: No work scheduled this quarter. Service and data providers are participating in
the metadata standards discussions and are investigating prototypes.
8
Portals and Workbenches
8.1 Data Location Services (McGlynn, USRA/HEASARC)
Status: No scheduled activities prior to CY2002 Q2.
8.2 Cross-Correlation Services (Djorgovski, Caltech)
Status: No scheduled activities prior to CY2002 Q3.
8.3 Visualization Services (Williams, CACR)
Status: No scheduled activities prior to CY2003 Q3.
8.4 Theoretical Models (De Young, NOAO)
Status: A group of interested theoretical astrophysicists has been in communication for
several months and is in the process of defining science requirements for theory as well
as constructing demonstration cases.
9
Test-Bed
Test-bed activities are not yet scheduled in detail. However, planning is underway for
deployment of NVO prototype services on suitable testbed systems.
Highlights: We are working towards setting up a basic tested for the initial science
prototypes. We have established contact with the iVDGL project in the hopes of
collaborating on such issues as setting up an operations center.
Issues and Concerns: Although the basic infrastructure can be put in place, we need a
clear understand the details of the science prototypes to be able to provide the necessary
functionality. We expect that work on the testbed will enter its full phase in the next
quarter. We feel that many of the fundamental testbed issues will be in common in other
projects such as iVDGL and thus we will with other projects to use common solutions
where applicable.
Status: We are now in the initial stages of requirements gathering. The security
requirements being gathered under WBS 4.5 will be used in determining the
authentication security procedures for the tested.
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10 Science Prototypes
10.1 Definition of Essential Astronomical Services (Szalay, JHU)
Status: We have defined the Cone Search service, and are in the process of defining a
simple image mosaic service.
10.2 Definition of Representative Query Cases (De Young, NOAO)
Highlights: We have established the Science Working Group to implement the
objectives of WBSs 10.2 and 10.3.
Issues and Concerns: Our goal is to define the final list of science prototypes at the midApril team meeting in Tucson. This will require intensive groundwork by the Science
Working Group.
Status: A preliminary list of candidate science demonstration topics for observational
astronomy has been developed.
10.3 Design, Definition, and Demonstration of Science Capabilities (De Young, NOAO)
Status: JHU has implemented a prototype portal, called SkyQuery that can do dynamic
cross-matching among external catalogs, using SOAP.
11 Outreach and Education
11.1 Strategic Partnerships (Voit, STScI)
Highlights: We have begun to recruit strategic partners for education and outreach on
behalf of NVO. Those partners will help us identify key capabilities that the NVO
infrastructure should have in order to facilitate the development of education and
outreach products. We have scheduled an NVO Education & Outreach workshop to be
held at STScI on July 11-12, at which the NVO outreach team and our partners will
assemble a list of outreach requirements for the NVO infrastructure.
Status: Partners recruited as of 3/29/02 include Isabel Hawkins, representing the NASA
Office of Space Science education community (11.1.1), Doug Isbell, representing the
NSF-funded NOAO observatories (11.1.2), Umesh Thakkar, representing NSF-funded
NCSA computing labs (11.1.2), and Charles Liu from the Hayden Planetarium (11.1.5).
11.2 Education Initiatives (Voit, STScI)
Status: No activities planned this quarter.
11.3 Outreach and Press Activities (Voit, STScI)
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Status: No activities planned this quarter.
Activities by Organization
CaltechAstronomy Department: Activities have focused on leadership of the NASANSF Science Definition Team.
CaltechCenter for Advanced Computational Research (CACR): CACR has been
leading a number of technical and management activities in this past quarter, including
the development of the VOTable standard and the prototype Cone Search facility. At the
end of the quarter CACR had begun work on a cross-match facility based on the
VOTables returned from the Cone Search services. CACR has also set up the team web
site and e-mail distribution lists and arranges EC and WG telecons.
CaltechInfrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC): We are writing Software
Management plans for the Image Mosaic Service, which we now call MONTAGE
(Mosaics On the TerAgrid Express). We have drafted software requirements, and set up
a User Advisory Board to provide feedback on Science Use Cases. We have developed
requirements for the scaleable version of Psearch.
We will deploy a prototype request management system in v20 of OASIS in June 2002.
This prototype is an operational proof-of-concept, and will be limited to controlling file
transfer requests.
CaltechNASA Extragalactic Database (NED): No work scheduled this quarter.
Carnegie-Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh (CMU/UPitt): CMU/UPitt has
been active in the NASA-NSF Science Definition Team, taking the lead on the science
drivers section of the report.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL): Fermilab participated in discussions
and planning for WBS 3 (Metadata) and elements of WBS 5.1 (Resource Discovery).
With help from Tom McGlynn (HEASARC) we created a sample data model for a
document that would describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Archives.
In NVO-related activities as part of the Griphyn/iVDGL projects, Fermilab is now
operating a 10-node analysis cluster using CONDOR (one of the grid infrastructure
toolkits).
Johns Hopkins University: We have created several demos using Web Services. One
demo involves cross-querying several archives using a cross-match web service. We
completed the registry service for the Cone Search demo. We have built an SqlServer
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version of the FIRST archive. We completed the Cone Search service for the SDSS and
FIRST archives.
We completed a successful demonstration of an angular correlation function ‘black-box’
service that is integrated with an SQL database. With Jim Gray (Microsoft Research) we
have built a small-scale image mosaic/cutout service within the SDSS archive.
Microsoft Research: We have been working with Alex Szalay and students on
SkyServer (http://SkyServer.sdss.org/), which supports outreach and education (about 50
students per day use the projects) and astronomy research (about 300 astronomers per day
use the site). A paper describing the SkyServer work will appear at SIGMOD and a
second more detailed paper documents the 20 queries. We also worked with the JHU
team on SkyQuery, which is a multi-site multi-survey database server
(http://contest.eraserver.net/skyquery/). We also built (in cooperation with Alex Szalay)
a web service (http://skyservice.pha.jhu.edu/sdsscutout/) that produces atlas “cutout”
images from the SDSS images.
National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO): NOAO participated in the
Metadata working group (WBS 3), including weekly telecons and email discussions. We
are currently evaluating the VOTable standard and are planning to contribute to the Cone
Search first-year prototype. We are contributing to the effort to define the NVO data
models (WBS 2), and preliminary discussions and studies are underway. We are
participating in development of the system architecture (WBS 4), and have contributed to
initial discussions to organize the effort. We are leading the data access portals effort
(WBS 5.4), and are currently attempting to relate the data access portal architecture to the
overall NVO system architecture, as well as define an interesting first-year prototype.
We are also leading the Science Working Group and the NVO theory program. We have
participated in several weekly management review telecons and the regular telecons of
the Executive Committee.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO): NRAO participated in the metadata
working group. NRAO is currently implementing a Cone Search to access a few radio
resources. NRAO has received funding from JHU and is in the process of hiring a
scientist to work on NVO activities within NRAO.
Raytheon/ADC: Raytheon staff at the Astronomical Data Center (ADC) participated in
the Metadata Standards (WBS 3) activities. This included: (a) participation in bi-weekly
telecons of the NVO Metadata Working Group; (b) development of the “100 science
questions for NVO”; (c) analysis of the “100 questions” to determine their derived
metadata requirements and standards; and (d) development of RDF examples. In
addition, ADC contributed to the development of the VOTable standard specification. As
part of our participation in the NVO Metadata Working Group we investigated the uses,
purposes, and implementations of RDF/DAML as a possible means of metadata
negotiation between the NVO and the distributed data centers.
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San Diego Supercomputer Center: SDSC is participating in the system architecture
design meetings, which have initially been conducted as one-on-one exchanges with
groups providing current services. SDSC is supporting the 2MASS collection, with the
goal of having a background normalization of the 2MASS images being done as the first
data intensive application on the NSF Teragrid. SDSC is developing catalogs for virtual
data products.
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory: SAO led the Data Model design (WBS 2.1,
2.2) and the Metadata design (WBS 3.1) efforts. Jonathan McDowell and Arnold Rots
attended the Opticon Archive Interoperability meeting in Strasbourg, in January, and had
additional discussion with the staff at CDS. NVO concepts were discussed with
colleagues at CFA and several archives and sample data sets were analyzed (Optical,
Radio, X-ray) to identify their unique and common characteristics.
Space Telescope Science Institute: STScI’s participation is in the areas of project
management, education and outreach coordination, and support for metadata standards
development. In the past quarter this work included:
 Developing of a project-wide schedule.
 Participating in the Opticon Interoperability Working Group meeting in Strasbourg,
France (Jan 28-29).
 Participating in the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory Science Working Group
meeting in Garching, Germany (Feb 7).
 Working on an international VO roadmap and organizing telecon discussions of
NVO, AVO, and AstroGrid coordination.
 Participating in meetings and telecons of the NASA-NSF Science Definition Team,
and contributing substantially to the writing and editing of the team report.
 Co-organizing a special NVO session for the AAS meeting in June.
 Co-organizing the forthcoming international VO conference (Garching, June).
 Submitting a proposal for an IAU Symposium on the VO for the summer 2003
General Assembly.
 Assisting the JHU Sponsored Programs office in establishing subawards for all CoI
organizations by writing statements of work and reviewing subaward documentation.
 Working with key personnel in the community on finalizing new world coordinate
system standards for FITS; these will likely become the WCS standards for the VO.
 Participating in the Metadata Working Group.
 Implementing four Cone Search services (W. O’Mullane).
 Organizing next NVO project team meeting (Apr 16-17, Tucson).
 Identifying education and outreach partners.
University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign/National Center for Supercomputer
Applications (UIUC/NCSA): Activity in this quarter has been dominated by activities
of the Metadata Working group:
 Attended the Strasbourg Interoperability Workshop, Jan. 28-29
 Metadata Working Group activities:
o Ran weekly telecons
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o Developed and analyzed a running list of VO science questions
(http://monet.astro.uiuc.edu/~rplante/VO/metadata/100questions.html)
o Implemented Cone Search demonstration
University of Pennsylvania: Penn participated in the design discussions regarding
metadata concepts, initiated the design of a plausible new standard for time series data,
and participated in the exploration of new science test-beds for the NVO program.
Concerning time series, preliminary work indicates that an extension of FITS, with NVO
compliant metadata (see WBS 3), will be the most readily accepted proposal.
University of Southern California (USC/ISI): The USC Information Sciences Institute
participated in gathering the security requirements for NVO (WBS 4.5). We have setup a
security working group and formulated a set of initial questions/issues that will be a
starting point for the requirements gathering process. ISI has also participated in System
Design (WBS 4.1), looking at the architecture components for NVO, and its
requirements. ISI has also initiated work in the Testbed (WBS 9); we are currently
looking at the security aspects of the testbed, and will use the security requirements
gathered under (WBS 4.5) to guide the testbed authentication and security infrastructure.
We are also working with other projects such as iVDGL to use common testbed solutions
where applicable.
United States Naval Observatory: USNO's work for the quarter has consisted of
continued efforts to upgrade the USNOFS image archive and data server. Currently, this
is mostly at a level that is independent of progress on the NVO systems; ultimately, the
USNOFS system will be made to conform with the NVO systems.
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