Weaving the Astronomy Web
Abstracts of the posters

Poster Presentations, Thursday and Friday April 6-7 1995

WWW interface to the ESIS services at ESRIN and CDS
Salim G. Ansari (1) and Daniel Egret (2)
salim@mail.esrin.esa.it, egret@simbad.u-strasbg.fr
(1) Information Systems Division of ESA, ESRIN, Frascati, Italy
(2) CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

The European Space Information System is currently being transferred to several scientific institutions around Europe. One of the major goals of the project is to achieve a high level of integrity, whereby several sites will provide services in a uniform way by using today's World Wide Web technology.

ESRIN and the CDS are setting up the ESIS Catalogue Browser and the bibliographic service on the premises of the Observatoire de Strasbourg and plan to give access to over 600 catalogues and mission logs and over 500,000 bibliographic abstracts through the World Wide Web. Not only will there be a WWW browser interface available to search the catalogues, but in all other ESIS scientific packages that allow the retrieval, visualisation and manipulation of images, spectra and light curves, searches on the CDS Catalogue Browser will be implemented. The aim of the activity will be to make data retrieval more manageable and extensive by sharing archive maintenance and services within the astronomical community.

We discuss in this paper the setting up of The WWW interface and the types of search functionalities that will be made available in the future.

The server of the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon-Nançay
F. Arenou, J.M. Chevalier, K. Dubost, S. Huille, C. Laurent, L. Letourneur, J.M. Malherbe, J. Schneider, F. Spite, M. Spite
arenou@obspm.fr
Observatoire de Paris, France

The WWW server of the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon-Nançay will be presented. The main points which will be described are :

ESA/IUE under the Web.
J.D. Ponz, M. Barylak, A. de la Fuente and O. Holm
jdp@v3300.vilspa.esa.es, mb@vilspa.esa.es, fuente@cay.es
ESA IUE Observatory

This article describes the IUE World-Wide Web (WWW) information service at Villafranca. The description is given in general terms, without technical details, assuming that you are familiar with this system.

The first implementation of a WWW browser at Villafranca took place during summer 1993, within the context of exploratory studies to define a distribution mechanism for the IUE Final Archive. After comparing the services provided by different architectures (Ref. 1), it was evident that hypermedia information systems -- even at the implementation level two years ago -- were the adequate solution.

A pilot project started at that time with the following purposes:


The implementation of this pilot project was tested during the unique opportunity of the Jupiter/Shoemaker-Levy 9 event in July 1994.

WWW Access to the HST Data Archive
Kirk Borne and Tim Kimball
borne@stsci.edu, kimball@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute

We will present recent developments in the HST Data Archive, including a discussion of the contents of the archive catalog and archive data system. We will also describe the types of information that are available via our WWW interface, how to access this information, and plans for future enhancements.

The Ephemerides and Astronomical Data Server of Bureau Des Longitudes
Descamps, P., Thuillot, W., Arlot, J.-E., Montintin, A., Baron, N., Colas, F., Rocher, P., Bretagnon, P., Cavelier, F., Maulion, B.
descamps@bdl.fr
Bureau des longitudes, URA 707 du CNRS,
77 avenue Denfert Rochereau, F-75014 PARIS

A project of Ephemerides and Astronomical Data Server has been undertaken at Bureau des longitudes. Works in the fields of celestial mechanics, dynamics and astrometry, are performed in our laboratory and lead us to two main functions. First and foremost, the mission of Bureau des Longitudes is dedicated to build and publish ephemerides of Solar System objects. The second major activity lies in improving the accuracy of the dynamical models of the motions of these objects through research works. The distribution of data issued from these activities can highly be improved thanks to the Ephemerides Server we plan to develop on the Internet network.

This server, which is under development, will allow users to calculate on line coordinates of solar system objects or to transfer on his own computer a software or a file providing theses coordinates (planets, satellites, Moon, Sun, comets and asteroids) and to process with different changes of reference frames. The large time period covered by these ephemerides will make them useful as well for observers who have access to the network and who wish to find or to identify an object as for researchers who need to prepare or analyze observations.

Thus the World Wide Web is a powerful mechanism for serving such data on the Internet. Besides the possibility of archiving a wide set of useful static documents, another major interesting feature is to build a front-end query server making available in real time accurate positions and physical ephemerides of any solar system objects.

This server would give also access to our data base on the natural satellites astrometric observations NSDC (Natural Satellites Data Center) which have been developped since 1991, with the support of IAU.

The astronomical information server at CDS
Daniel Egret and François Ochsenbein
egret@simbad.u-strasbg.fr, francois@simbad.u-strasbg.fr
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, France

An astronomical information service on the World-Wide Web has been publicly available at CDS, Strasbourg, since December 1993. It provides access to the following documents and services:

We will illustrate how the WWW technique allows to build links between this variety of services.

Serveur WWW de l'Observatoire de Besançon
Françoise Gazelle, Annie Robin, Blandine Goidet
gazelle@obs-besancon.fr
Observatoire de Besançon

Apres une presentation du contenu du serveur WWW de l'Observatoire de Besançon, et notamment la base de donnees polarimetriques asteroidales POLARIS developpee par Blandine Goidet-Devel, je developperais l'acces a une forme simplifiee du "Modele de synthese de populations stellaires de la Galaxie" d'Annie Robin par l'intermediaire d'un formulaire.

The Star*s Family on Astronomy Resources on the Web
André HECK
Observatoire Astronomique
11, rue de l'Université
F-67000 Strasbourg, France
e-mail: heck@astro.u-strasbg.fr
URL: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~heck
Daniel EGRET
Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg
Observatoire Astronomique
11, rue de l'Université
F-67000 Strasbourg, France
e-mail: egret@astro.u-strasbg.fr
URL: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/people/de.html
François OCHSENBEIN
Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg
Observatoire Astronomique
11, rue de l'Université
F-67000 Strasbourg, France
e-mail: francois@simbad.u-strasbg.fr
URL: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/people/fo.html

The Star*s Family is a line of products offering detailed information on astronomical organizations as well as services of general and practical utility for astronomers and related space scientists.

Several resources are fully operational on the WWW:

The Star*s Family resources offer outstanding advantages such as a twenty-year tradition/experience in compilations, a resulting good exhaustivity of entries (including thousands of entries still without WWW link), an homegeneous coverage of all practical data, a permanent updating and quality checking scheme (including authentication of data originators), the largest amount of URLs available in a set of astronomy resources, a unique astronomy-oriented dictionary of acronyms and abbreviations, and so on.

Web/RGSC: Providing a WWW interface to the Guide Star Catalog
Oleg Malkov
malkov@inasan.rssi.ru
Moscow Center for Astronomical Data

RGSC (Refined GSC) is an ongoing project aimed at developing software that can overcome some deficiencies of the Guide Star Catalog. The GSC, while being by far the largest source of all-sky data to date, contains a lot of misclassifications and artifacts. Our aim is to use some advanced classification methods (Malkov, O. Yu., Smirnov, O.M. ``Classification of objects in the Guide Star Catalog'' 1995, in Proc. Fourth Annual Conference, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems, eds. Shaw D., Hayes J., Payne H., Baltimore, Sep 1994, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, in press.) that can derive correct classifications for many of these objects. The result of this, a compressed and refined GSC, we plan to make available on-line through the WWW.

We are developing a HTML forms-based interface to the RGSC catalog, which will provide much the same functionality that our GUIDARES program (Malkov, O.Yu., Smirnov, O.M. ``Guide Star Catalog data retrieval software III'' 1994, in Proc. Third Annual Conference, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems, eds. Crabtree D., Hanisch R., Barnes J., Victoria, Oct 1993, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, Vol. 61, 183.) provides for the original GSC on CD-ROM. Basically, a user will be able to query our server for a sampling of the catalog, or a plotted skymap (i.e., finder chart), by specifying position and size of area (in any one of four coordinate systems), magnitude range, types of objects, etc. Our paper will also discuss various other possible ways of serving RGSC over the Web, including clickable maps (i.e., click to zoom, etc.), as well as some future development possibilities.

La Base de Donnees LASCO au LAS
C. Mathieu, A. Llebaria et P. Lamy
mathieu@astrsp-mrs.fr, lasm0a::antoine, lasm0a::lamy
Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, Marseille

Dans le cadre de la mission spatiale SOHO (SOlar Heliospheric Observatory) d'observation du soleil mene conjointement par l'Agence Spatiale Europeenne (ESA) et la NASA, le Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale de Marseille (LAS) participe a l'experience LASCO d'etude de la couronne solaire au sein d'un consortium international. Notre laboratoire participe au traitement des donnees LASCO et a la responsabilite de creer une base de donnees nationale pour les investigateurs francais.

Dans cette comunication on presente les principales caracteristiques de l'archive des images et de la base associee. Elle doit permettre d'acceder a une masse de donnees extremement importante, correspondant a l'arrivee et au stockage d'environ 180 images par jour (une image representant entre 2 et 4 mega octets), pendant la duree de la mission (deux ans, lancement en septembre 1995).

La base de donnees, de type relationnel (Sybase), est concue pour permettre la visualisation des images elles memes, inseres dans la base sous forme compressee. On doit ainsi acceder aux images issues des calibrations avant et apres le lancement, et aux images de la mission. Pour ce faire on developpe divers interfaces. Le premier concerne le chargement automatique des nouvelles images dans la base au fur et a mesure de leur arrivee. Le deuxieme permet au logiciel de traitement d'images (IDL) d'etre interface avec la base pour assurer la encore le chargement automatique d'images selectionnees selon divers criteres.

La mise a disposition des donnees pour les astronomes francais, est prevue par un serveur Mosaic qui fournira des images compressees susceptibles d'etre transferees par reseau, qui proposera une consultation des donnees de la base et enfin qui donnera tous les renseignements sur la maniere de se procurer les images et sur l'etat de la mission en cours. Pour realiser ce serveur on utilise des outils developpes a l'ESO (interface WDB, STARCAT, ...).

Access to the Lausanne General Catalogue of Photometric Data (GCPD)
Jean-Claude Mermilliod
mermio@obs.unige.ch
Institut d'Astronomie - Université de Lausanne
CH-1290 Chavannes-des-Bois

Since 1970, the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Lausanne has been collecting published photoelectric data in up to 78 photometric systems, for more than 175,000 stars. The content of these collections is summarized in the General Catalogue of Photometric Data (GCPD, Hauck et al. 1990) The data from the major collections (UBV, uvby) are available in SIMBAD, but no public and easy access has so far been provided for the wealth of data and information contained in the numerous other photometric systems.

A Catalogue of Mean UBV Data on Stars (Mermilliod and Mermilliod 1995) is published by Springer. It contains identifications, positions and mean UBV data for more than 100,000 stars and summarizes forty years of UBV photometry (1953 - 1992).

The recent development of informatics and network facilities have prompted us to develop a new database using the Unix /rdb package on our Sun workstations and provide an access to the data collection through the World-Wide Web. This is a relational database system and most files contain the photometric data (identification (LID), data, source). The database contains also a file of general information and various tables. The form will provide an access:

  1. to the GCPD which describes the general information and available data in each photometric system. From this output, it will be possible to select the photometric systems one is interested in and get the original data and their references and/or the mean values;
  2. directly to the data for each photometric system.
This work is presently under development and more information will be provided in the contribution.

References.
Hauck B., Nitschelm C., Mermilliod M., Mermilliod J.-C. 1990, AAS 85, 989 Mermilliod J.-C., Mermilliod M. 1995, "Catalogue of Mean UBV Data on Stars" (Springer-Verlag, New-York).

BAse Solaire "Sol" 2000
Solar "Ground" Database 2000
Thierry Roudier
roudier@obs-mip.fr
Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées

BASS 2000 is a French solar data base project with possible extension of collaboration to other European countries.The main goals of BASS 2000 are: The main center will be located in Bagnères de Bigorre (France) and one "Full sun" antenna in Meudon observatory; another "Pedagogic" antenna in Nice Observatory will be also developped in the next future.

The minimun total volume of the raw data to be stored is 250 Gigabytes/year; one half of that total volume will be provided by THEMIS.

Catalogues of the data stored in BASS 2000 will be available on line via computer network and accessible also for example by a MOSAIC interface. The expected planning for BASS 2000 project is : the main center in Bagnères de Bigorre will start with THEMIS and Coronograph data up to 1998 and then the other French ground solar data will be introduced. We hope to have also codes and images processing on line in 1999 and a full run of that project in 2000. BASS 2000 project is under discussion in our French community.

BAse Solaire "Sol" 2000
Thierry Roudier
roudier@obs-mip.fr
Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées

L'accès aux données produites par les grands instruments au sol et dans l'espace est d'ores et déjà un enjeu important pour les laboratoires et les institutions qui entendent garder une place dans la compétition internationale. Le développement de plus en plus rapide des détecteurs modernes produit des flots accrus de données, aussi bien auprès des observatoires au sol que des missions spatiales. Le lancement du satellite SOHO en 1995, et la mise en service du télescope solaire THEMIS en 1996, vont fournir un flux de données extrémement important (plusieurs centaines de GigaOctets par an) qui doivent etre accessibles à l'ensemble de la communauté solaire compte tenu des investissements réalisés. La gestion des données spatiales du satellite SOHO est en cours de développement sous l'égide du projet MEDOC (IAS-CNES). Il reste cependant à créer une base de données solaires "SOL".

Le projet dénommé BASS 2000 (BAse Solaire "Sol" 2000) se propose de répondre très rapidement aux exigences de sauvegarde et de diffusion de toutes les données solaires "sol. Son objectif initial, compte tenu du calendrier très serré, est d'archiver et de diffuser les données provenant de THEMIS et d'assurer la diffusion rapide des "soleils entiers" (THEMIS et autres) vers le centre d'opération MEDOC de SOHO et le centre de prévisions de Meudon.

L'objectif final de BASS 2000 étant d'archiver et de diffuser en ligne l'ensemble des données solaires "Sol" françcaises à l'horizon de l'an 2000.
Le but principal de cette base de données, est de fournir un nouvel outil scientifique à la communauté solaire à partir d'un archivage et d'une diffusion des données solaires "sol", mais aussi par une mise à disposition de modèles et codes numériques (Transfert, MHD,...) produits par cette communauté pour l'interprétation des mesures. Un de ses avantages sera une standardisation des données solaires "sol" permettant d'une part une meilleure compatibilité avec les données spatiales (i.e. SOHO), et d'autre part de favoriser des échanges et des collaborations entre chercheurs. Bien sur le maintien à long terme des données et logiciels de réduction constituera toujours l'une des missions majeures de BASS 2000. La formation des étudiants, avec BASS 2000, comme outil pédagogique, par l'analyse de données pan-chromatiques, est aussi l'un de nos objectifs.

Le centre principal de BASS 2000 sera implanté à Bagnères de Bigorre. Une antenne "Soleil Entier" sera créée à Meudon dès 1995 et c'est en 1998 qu'une antenne "Pédagogique " sera développée a Nice.

Cette répartition géographique liée à un faible surcout, aura pour avantage d'offrir dès le début , une diffusion rapide et la sauvegarde des données de THEMIS. La connection des utilisateurs au centre Principal de Bagnères de Bigorre permettra, dans un premier temps, de connaitre toutes les observations disponibles de THEMIS, du CORO H-alpha du Pic du Midi et d' un certain nombre de données standards. Des catalogues en ligne contenant les observations archivées seront mis à disposition des utilisateurs pour consultation. Celle-ci s'effectuera de manière très conviviale par l'intermédiaire d'un logiciel de base de données relationnelle et d'interface de type MOSAIC (hyper texte). Les transferts de données dans le sens producteurs - BASS 2000 se réalisera en Format FITS ( les mots-clés étant préétablis de manière commune avec ceux de SOHO (MEDOC) ). La diffusion des données, par BASS 2000, se fera par envoi postal sous un certain nombre de formats possibles (FITS, GIF, PICT...). Les instituts (ou utilisateurs) qui souhaiteront dés 1995 visualiser ou récupérer très rapidement les observations de routine (dégradées) de THEMIS (ou autres) devront se connecter sur le serveur de l'antenne Meudonnaise (FTP anonyme). Les personnels impliqués dans ce projet sont Thierry ROUDIER (P.I) au centre Principal à Bagnères de Bigorre, J.M. MALHERBE (CoI. responsable Scientifique) et Jean ABOUDARHAM (CoI. coordinateur sol- espace) à Meudon. C'est vers 1998 - 1999, d'après le développement prévu du centre Principal, que les utilisateurs auront accès au meme type d'information pour l'ensemble des données solaires françaises . Vers 1999 - 2000 le centre principal de Bagnères de Bigorre offrira des services supplémentaires tels que l'utilisation de codes numériques, traitements d'images et récupération des données par réseaux informatiques. Cette montée progressive des fonctionnalités du Centre Principal de BASS 2000 de concert avec les services rendus par les antennes feront de BASS 2000 un outil de recherche et pédagogique très utile pour la communauté solaire et plus généralement au monde scientifique.

Multimedia Astronomy using CD-ROMs on the WWW
N. Ruggiero (1) and T.A. McGlynn (2)
ruggiero@grossc.gsfc.nasa.gov, mcglynn@grossc.gsfc.nasa.gov
(1) Hughes STX - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
(2) USRA - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

We present a multimedia approach to the use of CD-ROM's and the WWW in astronomical data analysis. Although the static CD format and the volatile Web may seem disjoint, we have created a structure which melds the data capacity of CD's with the flexibility of the Web.

HTML pages on the CDROM provide a natural mechanism to browse the CD using Web browsers. Web pages can provide guides to data, software, documentation and other ancillary files on the CD. Since the HTML files are simple ASCII files, the Web pages can be used as pointers even for users who may not have a browser available. By providing links to data off the CD, the Web pages allow a user of the CD's to transparently get updates, additional data, or send queries to the issuer of the CD. Every CD acts as doorway into the issuer's archive and data system.

We have created CD's which use Web pages in this fashion. We have found that the learning curve in using the CD's is virtually eliminated for those users who are familiar with the Web. The use of external links allows us to easily update software we have put on the CD and to `provide' additional data types that only a few users may desire. This synergy of the CD and Web technologies provides an innovative approach to a distributed yet coordinated archive.

Catalog of Faint Structures in Elliptical Galaxies
André Saar
ASaar@iap.fr
Astrophys. Inst. Potsdam

We intend to publish a catalog of faint structures in elliptical galaxies. Because these structures are only a few percent of the total surface brightness, have widely differing scale lengths and are superposed on steep intensity gradients, adaptive struc- ture detecting filters are used. The dynamic range of the results is quite high and the structures are so complex, that it is very difficult to present them adequately in gray tones. Because the dynamic range accessible by false color coding is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher, we intend to publish the color images of the catalog in WWW as a complement to an ordinary publication in a journal. Examples are given.

Observing Applications via WWW.
H.P. Stilmack (1) and R.J. Ivison (2)
hps@jach.hawaii.edu, rji@star.uclan.ac.uk
(1) Joint Astronomy Centre, Hilo HI
(2) Royal Observatories, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh

The Joint Astronomy Centre and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh operate and manage the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) and the James Clerk Maxwell Submillimetre Telescope (JCMT) on behalf of astronomers worldwide. Both telescopes have a Service Observing facility for observational programmes which can be performed by local staff on behalf of other investigators. Potential investigators have traditionally applied for time on these service programmes via electronic or postal mail to assessors and referees based in the partner countries. This paper presents a hypertext-based application method, incorporating some basic parameter-checking (e.g., instrument configuration, object visibility) and rapid feedback, on behalf of both telescopes.

ISSA-PS: A Postage Stamp Server on the World-Wide Web
Dave Van Buren (1), Rick Ebert (1), Daniel Egret (2)
dvb@ipac.caltech.edu, rick@ipac.caltech.edu, egret@simbad.u-strasbg.fr
(1) IPAC, Caltech, CA, USA
(2) CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, France

Postage-stamp servers are services which allow the user to retrieve images of small areas of the sky, in a standard format. The first such server to be made available on the World-Wide Web is the ISSA-PS, providing data from the Infrared Sky Survey Atlas, an all-sky survey made by the IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) at wavelengths of 12, 25, 60 and 100 microns.

Postage stamps cover a 2-degree field centered on the given target. Targets may be specified either by 1950 equatorial coordinates or by name. Names are converted to positions using the SIMBAD database in Strasbourg, France.