Visualization the Natural Disasters Simulations Results Based on Grid and Cloud Computing

Volcanology & seismolog

Astrophysics datamining in the classroom: Exploring real data with new software tools and robotic telescopes

Within the efforts to bring frontline interactive astrophysics and astronomy to the classroom, the Hands on Universe (HOU) developed a set of exercises and platform using real data obtained by some of the most advanced ground and space observatories. The backbone of this endeavour is a new free software Web tool - Such a Lovely Software for Astronomy based on Image J (Salsa J). It is student-friendly and developed specifically for the HOU project and targets middle and high schools. It allows students to display, analyze, and explore professionally obtained astronomical images, while learning concepts on gravitational dynamics, kinematics, nuclear fusion, electromagnetism. The continuous evolving set of exercises and tutorials is being completed with real (professionally obtained) data to download and detailed tutorials. The flexibility of the Salsa J platform tool enables students and teachers to extend the exercises with their own observations. The software developed for the HOU program has been designed to be a multi-platform, multi-lingual experience for image manipulation and analysis in the classroom. Its design enables easy implementation of new facilities (extensions and plugins), minimal in-situ maintenance and flexibility for exercise plugin. Here, we describe some of the most advanced exercises about astrophysics in the classroom, addressing particular examples on gravitational dynamics, concepts currently introduced in most sciences curricula in middle and high schools.Comment: 10 pages, 12 images, submitted to the special theme issue Using Astronomy and Space Science Research in Physics Courses of the American Journal of Physic

Toward porting Astrophysics Visual Analytics Services to the European Open Science Cloud

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) aims to create a federated environment for hosting and processing research data to support science in all disciplines without geographical boundaries, such that data, software, methods and publications can be shared as part of an Open Science community of practice. This work presents the ongoing activities related to the implementation of visual analytics services, integrated into EOSC, towards addressing the diverse astrophysics user communities needs. These services rely on visualisation to manage the data life cycle process under FAIR principles, integrating data processing for imaging and multidimensional map creation and mosaicing, and applying machine learning techniques for detection of structures in large scale multidimensional maps

An Innovative Workspace for The Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an initiative to build the next generation, ground-based gamma-ray observatories. We present a prototype workspace developed at INAF that aims at providing innovative solutions for the CTA community. The workspace leverages open source technologies providing web access to a set of tools widely used by the CTA community. Two different user interaction models, connected to an authentication and authorization infrastructure, have been implemented in this workspace. The first one is a workflow management system accessed via a science gateway (based on the Liferay platform) and the second one is an interactive virtual desktop environment. The integrated workflow system allows to run applications used in astronomy and physics researches into distributed computing infrastructures (ranging from clusters to grids and clouds). The interactive desktop environment allows to use many software packages without any installation on local desktops exploiting their native graphical user interfaces. The science gateway and the interactive desktop environment are connected to the authentication and authorization infrastructure composed by a Shibboleth identity provider and a Grouper authorization solution. The Grouper released attributes are consumed by the science gateway to authorize the access to specific web resources and the role management mechanism in Liferay provides the attribute-role mapping

Interactive 3D visualization for theoretical Virtual Observatories

Virtual Observatories (VOs) are online hubs of scientific knowledge. They encompass a collection of platforms dedicated to the storage and dissemination of astronomical data, from simple data archives to e-research platforms offering advanced tools for data exploration and analysis. Whilst the more mature platforms within VOs primarily serve the observational community, there are also services fulfilling a similar role for theoretical data. Scientific visualization can be an effective tool for analysis and exploration of datasets made accessible through web platforms for theoretical data, which often contain spatial dimensions and properties inherently suitable for visualization via e.g. mock imaging in 2d or volume rendering in 3d. We analyze the current state of 3d visualization for big theoretical astronomical datasets through scientific web portals and virtual observatory services. We discuss some of the challenges for interactive 3d visualization and how it can augment the workflow of users in a virtual observatory context. Finally we showcase a lightweight client-server visualization tool for particle-based datasets allowing quantitative visualization via data filtering, highlighting two example use cases within the Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory.Comment: 10 Pages, 13 Figures, Accepted for Publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Vialactea Visual Analytics tool for Star Formation studies of the Galactic Plane

We present a visual analytics tool, based on the VisIVO suite, to exploit a combination of all new-generation surveys of the Galactic Plane to study the star formation process of the Milky Way. The tool has been developed within the VIALACTEA project, founded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, that creates a common forum for the major new-generation surveys of the Milky Way Galactic Plane from the near infrared to the radio, both in thermal continuum and molecular lines. Massive volumes of data are produced by space missions and ground-based facilities and the ability to collect and store them is increasing at a higher pace than the ability to analyze them. This gap leads to new challenges in the analysis pipeline to discover information contained in the data. Visual analytics focuses on handling these massive, heterogeneous, and dynamic volumes of information accessing the data previously processed by data mining algorithms and advanced analysis techniques with highly interactive visual interfaces offering scientists the opportunity for in-depth understanding of massive, noisy, and high-dimensional data

An integrated visualization environment for the virtual observatory: Current status and future directions

Visual exploration and discovery applications are invaluable tools to provide prompt and intuitive insights into the intrinsic data characteristics of modern astronomy and astrophysics datasets. Due to the massively large and highly complex datasets, various technical challenges are involved to reach, e.g. interactivity, integration, navigation and collaboration. This paper describes a number of approaches to address these challenges, and focuses on the current status of VisIVO (Visualization Interface for the Virtual Observatory) concentrating on the provided tools ranging from a desktop application to a science gateway and a mobile application. We emphasize the latest developments made in the context of past and current international European funded projects and highlight planned future developments towards further integration within the framework of the Virtual Observatory