This document discusses Google Sky, a project to create an online astronomy platform using Google Earth technology. It would provide an interactive digital sky map as the base layer, onto which Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical images and data could be accurately overlaid. Key challenges include handling the massive amounts of multi-wavelength astronomical data over time. The project aims to make vast databases of astronomical images, catalogs and other data easily accessible and searchable to the public.
1. Google Sky
Carol Christian & Alberto Conti
Space Telescope Science Institute
Saturday, March 7, 2009
2. Community
Missions
Office
Marc Postman
Carol Christian
Alberto Conti
Pat Brown
Saturday, March 7, 2009
3. CMO Goals
Optimize the science Develop, nurture, and
from community-led share innovations in
astrophysics missions space astronomy
and projects. science operations.
Collaborate on the next
generation of space
astrophysics programs.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
4. Astronomy Project Timeline
A Partial List of Key Astrophysics Facilities
Ares V Flights
Beyond Einstein
INTEGRAL WISE JWST
SWIFT SIM? TPF?
WMAP Herschel - Planck
Kepler
GLAST
GALEX
FUSE
XMM
Chandra
Spitzer
HST
SOFIA
SDSS
VLT & Gemini Observatories
PANSTARRS
LSST
TMT
ALMA
NVO Development NVO Operations
2000 2005 2010 2015
Start date and Probable Duration
Saturday, March 7, 2009
5. Astronomy Project Timeline
STScI Project and Mission Activity
Ares V Flights
Beyond Einstein
INTEGRAL WISE JWST
SWIFT SIM? TPF?
WMAP Herschel - Planck
Kepler
GLAST
GALEX
FUSE
XMM
Chandra
Spitzer
HST
SOFIA
SDSS
VLT & Gemini Observatories
PANSTARRS
LSST
TMT
ALMA
NVO Development NVO Operations
2000 2005 2010 2015
Start date and Probable Duration
Saturday, March 7, 2009
7. Computer
Biology Economics
Science
Medicine Government Astronomy
Massive amounts
of information
Saturday, March 7, 2009
8. Astronomy is changing
Old days: photographic plates
1960: astronomical data goes
digital
?
New instruments collect 100
GB/night
Detectors follow Moore’s Law
Total data double every 2 years
Growth over 25 years is a
factor of 30 in glass, 3000 in
pixels
Saturday, March 7, 2009
9. Astronomy is changing
Old days: photographic plates
1960: astronomical data goes
digital
New instruments collect 100
GB/night
Detectors follow Moore’s Law
Total data double every 2 years
Growth over 25 years is a
factor of 30 in glass, 3000 in
pixels
Saturday, March 7, 2009
39. Base Map
Digitized Sky Survey
• The National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory
Sky Atlas (POSS-I)
• Second POSS (POSS-II)
• photographic bands: J, F, N used to generate RGB
• Oschin Schmidt & UK Schmidt Telescopes
• Plates scanned at STScI
Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• 2.5-meter telescope on Apache Point
• 1/4 of the sky
Saturday, March 7, 2009
40. Merging the basemap
• Project lat/long
• Warp to Earth geodetic coordinates
• Account for first order distortions across fields
• Match tiles at edges
• Color balance adjusted between tiles
• Projection causes problems at the poles
Saturday, March 7, 2009
41. HST Data
Press Release images from HubbleSite
• Selected WFP2 and ACS images
• Recover World Coordinate System
• Overlay image on basemap
• Adjust images by hand
• Retrieve “bounding box” and
rotation
• Warp to geodetic
Saturday, March 7, 2009
42. PR collection in the NVO
• Simple Image Access
Protocol (SIAP)
• World Coordinate
System (WCS)
Sky in Google Earth
World Wide Telescope
Saturday, March 7, 2009
44. Adding images
• Accurate WCS
astrometry.net
or
computewcs
• Warp to Sky
Add annotation,
information, links
Saturday, March 7, 2009
45. Metatags
• NASA Education Space Science Resource Directory
• Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard
• National Virtual Observatory meta-tags
• Automated collection and clustering of tags
• Astrophysics Data System
• Proposal databases
• Visual Faceted Browsing
Saturday, March 7, 2009
56. Dr Carol Christian
carolc@stsci.edu
Dr Alberto Conti
aconti@stsci.edu
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Editor's Notes
The Community Missions Office is the focal point for bringing the cumulative expertise and experience of STScI personnel to tune relevant support for mission science operations, data archiving, proposal peer review, and education/outreach. Our philosophy is to integrate the scientific perspective into all aspects of missions to maximize the scientific return through cost effective application of our products, services, and operations abilities. Our motivation is to reduce operations costs for community-led missions by leveraging the science operations systems we already have in-place here at STScI. Experiences on several of our projects suggests that we are being successful in this regard.
Here are the 3 primary goals the institute’s CMO strives to achieve.
You clearly know the landscape of astronomy missions and facilities on the ground and in space is quite diverse and holds promise for many exciting discoveries. Our aim is to offer to the community the use our scientific and technical experiences to help minimiize duplication of effort, help avoid known operational pitfalls. But we, as members of this same community, are also keenly interested in identifying and collaborating in future missions that will carry astrophysics forward in a number of areas.
These are the subset of those missions that we are or will be playing a role in. Obviously some, like HST and JWST, we play a key role. Others we play an important supporting role by carrying out a specific operations task that is integrated with an external science operations center or team.