The space physics environment data analysis system (SPEDAS)

With the advent of the Heliophysics/Geospace System Observatory (H/GSO), a complement of multi-spacecraft missions and ground-based observatories to study the space environment, data retrieval, analysis, and visualization of space physics data can be daunting. The Space Physics Environment Data Analysis System (SPEDAS), a grass-roots software development platform (www.spedas.org), is now officially supported by NASA Heliophysics as part of its data environment infrastructure. It serves more than a dozen space missions and ground observatories and can integrate the full complement of past and upcoming space physics missions with minimal resources, following clear, simple, and well-proven guidelines. Free, modular and configurable to the needs of individual missions, it works in both command-line (ideal for experienced users) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) mode (reducing the learning curve for first-time users). Both options have “crib-sheets,” user-command sequences in ASCII format that can facilitate record-and-repeat actions, especially for complex operations and plotting. Crib-sheets enhance scientific interactions, as users can move rapidly and accurately from exchanges of technical information on data processing to efficient discussions regarding data interpretation and science. SPEDAS can readily query and ingest all International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP)-compatible products from the Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF), enabling access to a vast collection of historic and current mission data. The planned incorporation of Heliophysics Application Programmer’s Interface (HAPI) standards will facilitate data ingestion from distributed datasets that adhere to these standards. Although SPEDAS is currently Interactive Data Language (IDL)-based (and interfaces to Java-based tools such as Autoplot), efforts are under-way to expand it further to work with python (first as an interface tool and potentially even receiving an under-the-hood replacement). We review the SPEDAS development history, goals, and current implementation. We explain its “modes of use” with examples geared for users and outline its technical implementation and requirements with software developers in mind. We also describe SPEDAS personnel and software management, interfaces with other organizations, resources and support structure available to the community, and future development plans.Published versio

Collective awareness platforms and digital social innovation mediating consensus seeking in problem situations

In this paper we show the results of our studies carried out in the framework of the European Project SciCafe2.0 in the area of Participatory Engagement models. We present a methodological approach built on participative engagements models and holistic framework for problem situation clarification and solution impacts assessment. Several online platforms for social engagement have been analysed to extract the main patterns of participative engagement. We present our own experiments through the SciCafe2.0 Platform and our insights from requirements elicitation

Iris: an Extensible Application for Building and Analyzing Spectral Energy Distributions

Iris is an extensible application that provides astronomers with a user-friendly interface capable of ingesting broad-band data from many different sources in order to build, explore, and model spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Iris takes advantage of the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, but hides the technicalities of such standards by implementing different layers of abstraction on top of them. Such intermediate layers provide hooks that users and developers can exploit in order to extend the capabilities provided by Iris. For instance, custom Python models can be combined in arbitrary ways with the Iris built-in models or with other custom functions. As such, Iris offers a platform for the development and integration of SED data, services, and applications, either from the user's system or from the web. In this paper we describe the built-in features provided by Iris for building and analyzing SEDs. We also explore in some detail the Iris framework and software development kit, showing how astronomers and software developers can plug their code into an integrated SED analysis environment.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computin

Spectroscopic Analysis in the Virtual Observatory Environment with SPLAT-VO

SPLAT-VO is a powerful graphical tool for displaying, comparing, modifying and analyzing astronomical spectra, as well as searching and retrieving spectra from services around the world using Virtual Observatory (VO) protocols and services. The development of SPLAT-VO started in 1999, as part of the Starlink StarJava initiative, sometime before that of the VO, so initial support for the VO was necessarily added once VO standards and services became available. Further developments were supported by the Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawaii until 2009. Since end of 2011 development of SPLAT-VO has been continued by the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. From this time several new features have been added, including support for the latest VO protocols, along with new visualization and spectra storing capabilities. This paper presents the history of SPLAT-VO, it's capabilities, recent additions and future plans, as well as a discussion on the motivations and lessons learned up to now.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Computin

European ALMA operations: the interaction with and support to the users

The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) is one of the largest and most complicated observatories ever built. Constructing and operating an observatory at high altitude (5000m) in a cost effective and safe manner, with minimal effect on the environment creates interesting challenges. Since the array will have to adapt quickly to prevailing weather conditions, ALMA will be operated exclusively in service mode. By the time of full science operations, the fundamental ALMA data product shall be calibrated, deconvolved data cubes and images, but raw data and data reduction software will be made available to users as well. User support is provided by the ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs) located in Europe, North America and Japan. These ARCs constitute the interface between the user community and the ALMA observatory in Chile. For European users the European ARC is being set up as a cluster of nodes located throughout Europe, with the main centre at the ESO Headquarters in Garching. The main centre serves as the access portal and in synergy with the distributed network of ARC nodes, the main aim of the ARC is to optimize the ALMA science output and to fully exploit this unique and powerful facility. The aim of this article is to introduce the process of proposing for observing time, subsequent execution of the observations, obtaining and processing of the data in the ALMA epoch. The complete end-to-end process of the ALMA data flow from the proposal submission to the data delivery is described.Comment: 7 pages, three figure

Enhanced Management of Personal Astronomical Data with FITSManager

Although the roles of data centers and computing centers are becoming more and more important, and on-line research is becoming the mainstream for astronomy, individual research based on locally hosted data is still very common. With the increase of personal storage capacity, it is easy to find hundreds to thousands of FITS files in the personal computer of an astrophysicist. Because Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) is a professional data format initiated by astronomers and used mainly in the small community, data management toolkits for FITS files are very few. Astronomers need a powerful tool to help them manage their local astronomical data. Although Virtual Observatory (VO) is a network oriented astronomical research environment, its applications and related technologies provide useful solutions to enhance the management and utilization of astronomical data hosted in an astronomer's personal computer. FITSManager is such a tool to provide astronomers an efficient management and utilization of their local data, bringing VO to astronomers in a seamless and transparent way. FITSManager provides fruitful functions for FITS file management, like thumbnail, preview, type dependent icons, header keyword indexing and search, collaborated working with other tools and online services, and so on. The development of the FITSManager is an effort to fill the gap between management and analysis of astronomical data.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in New Astronom

Molecfit: A general tool for telluric absorption correction. I. Method and application to ESO instruments

Context: The interaction of the light from astronomical objects with the constituents of the Earth's atmosphere leads to the formation of telluric absorption lines in ground-based collected spectra. Correcting for these lines, mostly affecting the red and infrared region of the spectrum, usually relies on observations of specific stars obtained close in time and airmass to the science targets, therefore using precious observing time. Aims: We present molecfit, a tool for correcting for telluric absorption lines based on synthetic modelling of the Earth's atmospheric transmission. Molecfit is versatile and can be used with data obtained with various ground-based telescopes and instruments. Methods: Molecfit combines a publicly available radiative transfer code, a molecular line database, atmospheric profiles, and various kernels to model the instrument line spread function. The atmospheric profiles are created by merging a standard atmospheric profile representative of a given observatory's climate, of local meteorological data, and of dynamically retrieved altitude profiles for temperature, pressure, and humidity. We discuss the various ingredients of the method, its applicability, and its limitations. We also show examples of telluric line correction on spectra obtained with a suite of ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) instruments. Results: Compared to previous similar tools, molecfit takes the best results for temperature, pressure, and humidity in the atmosphere above the observatory into account. As a result, the standard deviation of the residuals after correction of unsaturated telluric lines is frequently better than 2% of the continuum. Conclusion: Molecfit is able to accurately model and correct for telluric lines over a broad range of wavelengths and spectral resolutions. (Abridged)Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Introducing BAX: a database for X-ray clusters and groups of galaxies

We present BAX, Base de Donnees Amas de Galaxies X (http://webast.ast.obs-mip.fr/bax), a multi-wavelength database dedicated to X-ray clusters and groups of galaxies allowing detailed information retrieval. BAX is designed to support astronomical research by providing access to published measurements of the main physical quantities and to the related bibliographic references: basic data stored in the database are cluster/group identifiers, equatorial coordinates, redshift, flux, X-ray luminosity (in the ROSAT band) and temperature, and links to additional linked parameters (in X-rays, such as spatial profile parameters, as well as SZ parameters of the hot gas, lensing measurements,and data at other wavelengths, such as optical and radio). The clusters and groups in BAX can be queried by the basic parameters as well as the linked parameters or combinations of these. We expect BAX to become an important tool for the astronomical community. BAX will optimize various aspects of the scientific analysis of X-ray clusters and groups of galaxies, from proposal planning to data collection, interpretation and publication, from both ground based facilities like MEGACAM (CFHT), VIRMOS (VLT) and space missions like XMM-Newton, Chandra and Planck.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal. Contains 4 pages and 1 figur