Auden, Elizabeth

Dalla, Silvia

Lawrence, Andrew

Tedds, Jonathan A.

Walton, Nicholas

Winstanley, Noel

The UK AstroGrid 5 project has developed the VOExplorer interface to the VO as part of its forthcoming Desktop suite of applications. VOExplorer offers a powerful data-centric visualisation for browsing and filtering the entire VO registry using an iTunes type interface. We demonstrate how this allows the user to bookmark their own personalised lists of resources and to run tasks on the selected resources as desired. Thus VOExplorer significantly simplifies returning relevant data to queries such as "find me all extended X-ray sources in the 2XMM catalog", and then export to a new catalogue or "find me all optical, near-IR and X-ray catalogued objects within 0.1 arcmins of a new transient Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) event" and now even "find me all transient events from e.g. GCN, IAU alerts previously recorded for this search radius". HelioScope similarly searches solar archives within a given time interval. We demonstrate how the user is then offered the opportunity to process and act on those data sets. For this purpose a range of data visualisation and analytical tools are now available to pass data into and between directly. These include TopCat for catalogues, Aladin and Gaia for images, SPLAT and VOSpec for spectra or a simple ADQL query interface for more advanced use cases.</p

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      VOExplorer: Visualising data discovery in the VirtualObservatoryCitation for published version:Tedds, JA, Winstanley, N, Lawrence, A, Walton, N, Auden, E, Dalla, S & Lawrence, A 2008, VOExplorer:Visualising data discovery in the Virtual Observatory. in RW Argyle, PS Bunclark & JR Lewis (eds),Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) XVII. vol. 394, Astronomical Data AnalysisSoftware and Systems ASP Conference Series, ASTRONOMICAL SOC PACIFIC, SAN FRANCISCO, pp.159-162, 17th Annual Conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems, London, 23/09/07.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Peer reviewed versionPublished In:Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) XVIIGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 05. Apr. 2019Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XVII O8.2ASP Conference Series, Vol. 394, c© 2008R. W. Argyle, P. S. Bunclark, and J. R. Lewis, eds.VOExplorer: Visualising Data Discovery in the VirtualObservatoryJonathan A. TeddsAstroGrid, Euro-VO Data Centre Alliance & XMM-Newton SurveyScience Centre, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE17RH, UKNoel Winstanley,1 Andrew Lawrence,2 Nicholas Walton,3 ElizabethAuden4AstroGrid & European Virtual Observatory Technology Project (EUFP6)Silvia DallaAstroGrid, University of Central Lancashire, UKAbstract. The UK AstroGrid5 project has developed the VOExplorer inter-face to the VO as part of its forthcoming Desktop suite of applications. VO-Explorer offers a powerful data-centric visualisation for browsing and filteringthe entire VO registry using an iTunes type interface. We demonstrate howthis allows the user to bookmark their own personalised lists of resources andto run tasks on the selected resources as desired. Thus VOExplorer significantlysimplifies returning relevant data to queries such as “find me all extended X-raysources in the 2XMM catalog”, and then export to a new catalogue or “find meall optical, near-IR and X-ray catalogued objects within 0.1 arcmins of a newtransient Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) event” and now even “find me all transientevents from e.g. GCN, IAU alerts previously recorded for this search radius”.HelioScope similarly searches solar archives within a given time interval. Wedemonstrate how the user is then offered the opportunity to process and act onthose data sets. For this purpose a range of data visualisation and analyticaltools are now available to pass data into and between directly. These includeTopCat for catalogues, Aladin and Gaia for images, SPLAT and VOSpec forspectra or a simple ADQL query interface for more advanced use cases.1University of Manchester, UK2University of Edinburgh, UK3University of Cambridge, UK4MSSL, University College, London, UK5http://www.astrogrid.org159160 Tedds et al.Figure 1. The VOExplorer interface: build a list of VO registered resourcesmatching user defined conditions as shown, e.g. X-ray clusters1. IntroductionThe range and complexity of datasets and resources published to the VirtualObservatory (VO) is rapidly increasing. These resources are heterogeneous -and are published through various standard interfaces allowing access to images,catalogues, spectra, transient event data, tool interfaces and so on.Providing access to these resources is a success of the Virtual Observatorymovement, where effective use of newly emerging publishing standards as pro-vided by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA6) has been madeby the astronomy community. Information about each resource published to theVirtual Observatory is entered into a top level, continually updating “registry”,this providing in effect a record of where and what the resource is.With the advent of these many resources available through the VO, anemerging challenge is how to offer the astronomer a reliable and usable meansto search, retrieve and visualise the relevant data and resources to meet theneeds of their particular science problem.The UK AstroGrid project has now developed the VOExplorer interfaceto the VO as part of its Desktop suite of applications. In this presentation webriefly outline examples of functionality using a simple science use case.6http://www.ivoa.netVOExplorer: Visualising VO Data Discovery 161Figure 2. Filter VO resources: apply filter wheels to metadata of the VOresource list such as content, coverage or resource type to refine search andlaunch e.g. positional search in ROSAT cluster catalogue using AstroScope.2. The VOExplorer Interface in action: 2XMM clusters of galaxiesVOExplorer offers a powerful data-centric visualisation for browsing and filter-ing the entire VO registry using an iTunes type interface. This allows you tobookmark your own personalised lists of resources for repeat use, filter using anyavailable metadata and then to run tasks on the selected resources as desired.In Fig 1 we show a screenshot of the VOExplorer resource search interfacewhich allows a user to build a set of AND, OR conditions. This example is asimple search for resources containing both “X-ray” in the title AND requiringany main field to contain “clusters”. A list of resources is then returned and thesearch may now be refined further by means of metadata filter wheels such ascontent, coverage or resource type as shown in Fig 2. Under “Actions” availablefor the selected resource (cone search interface to the ROSAT cluster cataloguein this case) is a positional search facility which launches the AstroScope tool.Similarly for solar datasets or transient event data one can launch the HelioScopeor VOScope tool on selected datasets to search by time interval.As an example of a more advanced task one can use VOExplorer to identifyan ADQL (Astronomical Data Query Language, based on a simple subset ofSQL) query interface to the newly released 2XMM7 X-ray catalogue available7http://xmmssc-www.star.le.ac.uk/Catalogue/2XMM/162 Tedds et al.Figure 3. Query science catalogue: select an ADQL query interface to the2XMM X-ray catalogue using VOExplorer then identify an extent columnand extract all extended sources according to user selected value(s) to createscience sample in VOTable format for further visualisation and analysis.in the VO registry via LEDAS8 (LEicester Database and Archive Service). Theuser can then filter the available 2XMM columns for extent parameters andthen perform a simple 3-line ADQL query to select and return all extended X-ray sources (column ep extent ≥6 arcsecs) in the catalogue to standard VOTableformat (Fig 3). More advanced cross matching to other archives and other com-plex tasks may then be performed using e.g. python scripts from the commandline using the AstroGrid Runtime capability and template examples are providedby AstroGrid.Once a sample is selected the user is offered the opportunity to processand act on those data sets. For this purpose a range of data visualisationand analytical tools are available to pass data into and between directly viathe PLASTIC/SAMP messaging protocol. Popular tools include TopCat forcatalogues, Aladin and Gaia for images, SPLAT and VOSpec for spectra.Acknowledgements. The authors wish to acknowledge the team effort byeveryone involved in AstroGrid working in partnership with our European-VOand IVOA colleagues.8http://ledas-www.star.le.ac.uk

VOExplorer: Visualising data discovery in the Virtual Observatory

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VOExplorer: Visualising data discovery in the Virtual Observatory

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