| NSF Org: |
OIA OIA-Office of Integrative Activities |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 14, 2010 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | September 14, 2010 |
| Award Number: | 1028162 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Stephen Meacham
smeacham@nsf.gov (703)292-7599 OIA OIA-Office of Integrative Activities O/D Office Of The Director |
| Start Date: | September 15, 2010 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,599,841.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,599,841.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
4200 FIFTH AVENUE PITTSBURGH PA US 15260-0001 (412)624-7400 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
4200 FIFTH AVENUE PITTSBURGH PA US 15260-0001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | CDI TYPE II |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.083 |
ABSTRACT
The growing onslaught of astronomical data available presents a great challenge. Astronomy lacks an easy-to-use and scalable way to collect and distribute expert information about objects from datasets of tens of thousands to billions of individual events and objects. Over the next decade, the amount of information available to the typical astronomer will grow by two orders of magnitude both in raw data size and in the number of objects.
This project pursues three research directions, each of which has the potential to transform how astronomers interface with large datasets: (1) a scalable annotation framework to enable linking of observations to specific experiments, models, or other observations; (2) a continuous workflow enactment system that would support automated reasoning in the presence of uncertainty; and (3) a computational framework for interactively analyzing astronomical datasets, allowing the construction and testing of hypotheses.
Project plans include the design and development of a prototype system (AstroShelf) and its evaluation using two timely science programs: (a) Using multi-wavelength data from the DEEP3 and AEGIS surveys, develop methods to incorporate images and catalogs from disparate datasets, allowing us to study how the demographics of galaxies have changed over the last 8 billion years. (b) Using properties of time-variable events found by the Pan-STARRS survey, develop techniques for rapid classification of transient phenomena, dissemination of their properties, and incorporation of feedback from follow-up observations. AstroShelf will include a publicly accessible, flexible annotation system for public datasets, which will also lend itself to outreach efforts involving annotations by the general public.
This project's significant impact is the ability to share information and expert opinions quickly and widely, about each new observation or event, fundamentally changing our ability to learn about the Universe; such functionality can also be applied in support of other scientific domains.
Results of this research will be made publicly available at www.astroshelf.pitt.edu.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project brought together astronomers and computer scientists (experts in data management and in data visualization) with the goal of creating a tool that would allow astronomers to easily explore, search, and annotate large-scale astronomical survey data. The project considered scalability both from a systems point-of-view (i.e., how to make the system work fast, despite the large volumes of data) and from a human point-of-view (i.e., how to make it easy for humans to discern interesting information/patterns from large data sets).
The developed tool, AstroShelf, is an easy to use dashboard, that has the following novel features:
- ability to visually overlay different data sources (e.g., SDSS and LSST) on top of each other, with knobs to adjust the transparency,
- ability to aggregate multiple data points as trend images, in order to facilitate pattern discovery,
- ability to show stamp-sized previews of the results, organized in a compressed way, and
- ability to interact with AstroShelf through a web-based user interface, but also programmatically, allowing mixed use (e.g., adding a few annotations using the web site and then accessing these through a program).
The developed technologies also include:
- support for multiple types of query personalization, and
- a new type of workflows, called continuous workflows, perfectly suited for complex alerting queries
As a proof of concept for using Astroshelf as a platform for the sharing of databases of astronomical objects of interest, we have used the public Astroshelf tools to share a catalog of Milky Way Analogs: galaxies that, based upon their mass and star formation histories, should closely resemble our own Milky Way Galaxy. Ideas from AstroShelf have informed efforts on visualization and analysis frameworks for two major astronomical surveys: the 4th generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
The project has had a significant impact on the training of the next generation of astronomers and computer scientists. It has involved 20 graduate students (7 of which where female) in different stages of their studies as well as four undergraduate students (one of whom pursued graduate studies).
The deliverables of the project include a web site (http://astro.cs.pitt.edu), a full code release on github (https://github.com/admtlab/astroshelfv3/) and two instructional YouTube videos that summarize/demonstrate the AstroShelf project from a regular user point of view (http://bit.ly/astroshelf1) and from a programmer user point of view (http://bit.ly/astroshelf2).
Last Modified: 04/04/2017
Modified by: Alexandros Labrinidis
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