AstroInformatics II: From public outreach to public engagement June 28, 2010
Posted by sarah in: science . 1 comment so far
Outreach and education are two areas that stand to gain from developments in semantic astronomy and an increased scientific presence on the web. Big changes have already taken place, driven by a community eager to connect and communicate about the research we do every day. As part of a panel at the AstroInformatics 2010 conference last week, I gave a talk on aspects of science communication and education that are benefiting from the semantic web.
The internet these days is a cacophony of conversations, opinions, visual information (and porn). Many scientists and science enthusiasts write about the stuff that inspires or excites them in blogs, like I do here, which allow them to connect to people they would never have encountered, let alone talked with, in real life. This has led to some great scientific content generated entirely by the science community itself, without intermediate brokerage by communication or media professionals. But in this symphony of chaos, how do we increase the signal to noise? How do we ensure that the best content is heard?
Summer conferencing May 20, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0 . 2commentsSummer is a busy season for conferencing, and some really interesting and fun meetings in the area of Open Science/Science Online/Science and Society are coming up in the next few months.
From 16 to 19 June, the California Institute of Technology will be hosting the 2010 edition of AstroInformatics, which looks excellent. The meeting has three days of “proper” conferencing, covering many topics – conceptual (changing paradigms in astronomy research, developments in other sciences) , technical (what are the newest tools for exploring, visualising and sharing data?) , people-based (astronomy education, citizen science). The 4th day is a workshop on astro-semantics. I’m really excited about the conference itself and about the trip as a whole – I’m well overdue a trip to the astronomy beehive/wasp’s nest (?) that is Pasadena, home to friends, colleagues and fellow bloggers. A tweetup may be in order – be warned.
Inconveniently clashing with AstroInformatics is the very cool-looking Science Hack Day in London on 19-20 June, hosted at the offices of the Guardian newspaper and sponsored by a bunch of great organisations. It’s a typical weekend of geekery with no real programme, just a bunch of coding-aficionados – and more than a few DotAstronomers, I couldn’t help but notice – getting together to Do Cool Stuff With Computers. I’m sorry to miss it, although I’m a little too technically incompetent to really contribute much. I always had the impression that biomedical scientists were much more active in participating in such events and it’s great to see that astronomers are getting seriously involved too – I spotted that LCOGT are even sponsoring the Hack Day.
I was also very happy to see the announcement of the 2010 instalment of Science Online London on 3-4 September. After last year’s fun and stimulating event at the Royal Institution in London, this year’s SOLo will take place in the British Library, who are cohosting the conference with Mendeley and Nature Publishing Group.There’s not much info yet on programme or fringe events, but if last year was anything to go by, it should be well worth attending.
Lay Science: Setting free the Data April 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: science . 4comments
The Guardian published a story earlier this week about a Belfast climate scientist Prof Mike Baillie, who is disgruntled at having to make his department’s decades’ worth of tree ring data available to a known climate sceptic as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. This story prompted the editor of this blog to post the above tweet. Also: “I don’t see the point of curating data for the public”, and “any nutter can attempt to disrupt my research”.
I wrote a post on Lay Science today about data sharing in science. Go read it here.
With a little help from our friends: Finding a home for E-ELT March 4, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, politics . 3comments
Cerro Paranal (middle right) and Cerro Armazones (middle left)
ESO announced today that their Council have recommended Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Andes as the preferred site for their next generation optical/IR observatory, the 42-m European Extremely Large Telescope. The decision came in response to the delivery of a technical report by the organisation’s E-ELT Site Selection Advisory Committee, from which Armazones emerged as the frontrunner, “because it has the best balance of sky quality across all aspects and it can be operated in an integrated fashion with the existing ESO Paranal Observatory”.
So does this means the deal is done? Apparently not. The text also tells us that ESO have received proposals to host the telescope from both Spain, who would like to see the telescope site on La Palma, and Chile, so a final run-off between these two countries now seems likely.
What has struck me about this whole site selection exercise is the different approaches taken by ESO for the E-ELT and their North American counterparts, the Thirty Meter Telescope project.
On Software in Astronomy March 1, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy . 16comments
Importance of the Hubble archive. The number of archival papers has exceeded the number of PI-led papers since 2006 (from White et al., 2009)
I’ve been giving some thought to software development in astronomy, which is a difficult topic. All astronomers agree that good data processing, and hence good software, is crucial to doing rigorous science. To interpret observational data, to translate electrons on a detector to scientific knowledge, requires a solid understanding of the instrument, the observing conditions, and of the exact process with which the data were treated. Many large ground- and space-based observatories, like those run by ESO, Gemini and NASA, strive to provide the community with “science-ready” data. This means that the data are processed to remove all instrumental signatures, allowing astronomers to dive straight into the analysis.
The rationale is that providing science-ready data essentially makes them usable by a much wider community than those involved in the observing campaign, or those used to working with a given instrument. Indeed, a big driver behind the global Virtual Observatory initiative is the “democratisation of astronomy” by providing anyone in the world with ready-to-use astronomical data, irrespective of their location or affiliation to large organisations.
