APPLICATIONS

The universe is a big place, and studying it is a big challenge. To help create universal access to observations from around the globe PPARC funds GridPP's sister project, Astrogrid. Formed at the same time as GridPP, AstroGrid is now a leading member of the international astronomy community. Dr Nicholas Walton, a Project Scientist from Cambridge University, explains the motivation for the original formation of Astrogrid. "We needed to set up a system to meet the challenges that were coming about from new observational technologies," says Walton. "We used to answer our questions using one or two data sets. Now there is a lot more diversity in the data that is around." The challenge was to allow global access to all data sources. "So a consortium was put together in the UK representing astronomy and computing groups that had a background in handling and publishing data." This consortium consists of 11 University groups, major players include Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leicester, Manchester, UCL and Mullard Space Science Laboratory. Astronomy data is dotted all around the world, "bearing this in mind, the consortium worked with international partners to have certain standards agreed upon so that data was published in a way that anyone could interact with it," says Walton. The solution was a Virtual Observatory (VO), which allows astronomers to access data from observatories across the world. "We're building something that allows you to view a virtual universe from your desktop as apposed to going to an observatory and observing the universe from there." The AstroGrid workbench is the main user interface for astronomers to use the VO, and although a global set of standards allows any astronomer to query the VO to ask find me info on this bit of sky, Astrogrid also provides UK astronomers unique access to workflows and applications, used to analyse this data. Astrogrid has also created Space a program that allows astronomers to share their workflows. "This is on the verge of making a fundamental change to how we publish results," says Walton. "You're no longer just looking at people interpretation of data. People can publish all their data so that other astronomers can build on it in their own way." Astrogrid is ramping up to become a fully usable system. "We're being factored into many projects, such as satellite missions," says Walton. "We're at a stage of transition and plan to move to full service operation at the beginning of 2008." More information can be found on AstroGrid at their Web site Thanks to Helen Thomson for reporting.