News from the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory
This March, I’ve put up two new VO resources (that’s jargon for “table or service or whatever”) that, I think, fit quite well what I like to call tangible astronomy: things you can readily relate to what you see when you step out at night. And, since I’m a professing astronomy nerd, that’s always nicely … Continue reading “Tangible Astronomy and Movies with TOPCAT”
It was already in the wee hours of Friday last week (CET) when the second “virtual Interop” had its rather unceremonious closing ceremony. Its predecessor in May had about it an air of a state of emergency. For instance, all sessions were monothematic. That was nice on the one hand, because a relatively large part … Continue reading “Sofa instead of Granada”
Today, I’ve released DaCHS 2.2, the second stable version of DaCHS running on Python 3. Indeed, we have ironed out a few sore spots that have put that “stable” into question, especially if you didn’t run things on Debian Buster. Mind you, playing it safe and just going for Debian is still recommended: Compared to … Continue reading “DaCHS 2.2 is out”
So far when you did spherical geometry in ADQL, you had points, circles, and polygons as data types, and you could test for intersection and containment as operations. This feature set is a bit unsatisfying because there are no (algebraic) groups in this picture: When you join or intersect two circles, the result only is … Continue reading “Crazy Shapes in TAP”
Today, I have released DaCHS 2.1, the first stable DaCHS running on Python 3. I have tried hard to make the major version move painless and easy, and indeed “pure DaCHS” RDs should just continue to work. But wherever there’s Python in your RDs or near them, things may break, since Python 3 is different … Continue reading “DaCHS 2.1: Say hello to Python 3”
About a year ago, I reported on a workshop on “Large Surveys with Small Telescopes” in Bamberg; at around the same time, I’ve published an example for those, the Bochum Galactic Disk Survey BGDS, which used a twin 15 cm robotic telescope in some no longer forsaken place in the Andes mountains to monitor the … Continue reading “The Bochum Galactic Disk Survey”
DaCHS is developed on Debian, and Debian is the recommended deployment platform. Hence, a new major release of Debian (where major means for them: We may break stuff) is always a big thing for me. And so it was with the release that came in July, codenamed “buster”. Both on the “big thing” and on … Continue reading “DaCHS is Bustered”
About every six month, the people making the standards for the Virtual Observatory meet to sort out the next things we need to tackle, to show off what we’ve done, and to meet each other in person, which sometimes is what it takes to take some excessive heat out of a debate or two. We’ve … Continue reading “The Paris Northern Spring Interop”
If you are an astronomer and you’ve ever tried looking for data in the Virtual Observatory Registry, chances are you have wondered “Why can’t I enter my position here?” Or perhaps “So, I’m looking for images in [NIII] – where would I go?” Both of these are examples for the use of Space-Time Coordinates (STC) … Continue reading “Space and Time not lost on the Registry”
Every half year, VO enthusiasts from all over the world gather for an “Interoperability conference”, or Interop for short. The latest such event, the Shanghai Interop 2017, ended Friday a week ago. It has been a “long” one again after the short southern spring Interop in Trieste last year (featured in this blog). As usual, … Continue reading “GAVO at the Northern Spring Interop”