IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (TM67)

TM67 - Thu, 20 Dec 2016 - 15:00 UTC

Contents

• IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (TM67)
  • Logistics
  • Agenda
  • Reports from the Projects
    • Argentina - NOVA
    • ArVO
    • AstroGrid
    • Australia-VO
    • BRAVO
    • China-VO
    • ChiVO
    • CVO
    • Euro-VO
    • ESAVO
    • France VO
    • GAVO
    • HVO
    • VObs.it
    • Japan-VO
    • Ukraine VO
    • USVOA
    • RVO
    • SA^3
    • SVO
    • VO-India
  • Report from the TCG
  • Reports from the WGs

Logistics

Thursday, Dec 20, 2016 @15:00 UTC

Agenda TM67

1. Roll Call and Agenda (JE)
2. Minutes of FM66
3. Review of Actions
4. Project Reports [Significant Events Only]
5. Overall TCG status
6. Approval of new IVOA Recommendation(s) [Standing Item]
7. IVOA Newsletter editorial/social media team renewal
8. IVOA term expirations (see list below)
9. Update on Northern Spring 2017 - Shanghai
10. Future Interop
    • Northern Spring 2017 - Shanghai, China (May 14-19)
    • Northern Automn 2017 - Santiago, Chile (Oct 27-29)
11. Date of Next Exec Meeting
12. AOB
13. Review of Action Items

• Positions with 12/2016 expiration with *no extension* available:
  • Education: Ch: Massimo Ramella
• Positions with 5/2017 expiration with *no extension* available:
  • Time Domain: Ch: John Swinbank
• Positions with 5/2017 expiration with *1 year extension* available:
  • Applications: Ch: Pierre Fernique, VCh: Tom Donaldson
  • Data Access: Ch: Francois Bonnarel, VCh: Marco Molinaro
  • Data Curation: Ch: Francoise Genova
  • Registry: Ch: Markus Demleitner

Argentina-NOVA

ArVO

AstroGrid

Australia-VO

BRAVO

China-VO

Two WWT driven planetariums were completed during the last 2 months, one locates at a high school in Guangzhou with 5 meter diameter dome, and the other locates at Shahe station of National Astronomical Observatory of China with a 7 meter diameter dome. Till now, there are 5 domes in total running on the WWT in China.

ChiVO

CVO

Euro_VO

ESAVO

France VO

GAVO

HVO

VObs.it

Japan-VO

RVO

SA^3

SVO

Ukraine_VO

USVOA

NAVO:

- The validation service for VO data providers run by NAVO noted record high levels of compliance with VO standards. Of the 18,477 active services tested, 83.6% completely passed validation. This is up substantially, in part due to the response to reviews of VO data providers that were sent out by to each site by NAVO last summer. These reviews described and suggested fixes for all validation issues. Full compliance with the VO standards helps ensure that the VO services are truly interoperable.

- MAST and the HEASARC have begun a collaboration to define how the VO DataLink protocol can be used to provide generic access to NASA archival data.

- NED's new image access service is now fully incorporated into the NAVO registry (and through that with the other VO registries).

CXC:

Planning the following VO session at the upcoming Jan AAS meeting :

"Flexible Multi‐dimensional Modeling of Complex Data in Astronomy" session on Wednesday, January 4 from 9:30 am ‐ 11:30 am in Grapevine 4 at the 229th AAS meeting.

In this session, we will explore methods for building and analyzing multi-wavelength, N-dimensional datasets with Sherpa, a Python-based general modeling and fitting application, and Iris, a tool built on top of Sherpa for analyzing spectral energy distributions. See the full abstract appended below.

We will use IPython Notebooks to guide the participants through Sherpa-Python sessions and present a demonstration showing Iris connectivity to data archives and examples of SED modeling. Participants will have free time to explore any of the several science worksheets provided at the end of the demonstrations, or work out their own analysis; the session leaders will be available for help and answering any questions participants have on Sherpa and Iris during this free time.

The following web page has been set up to review the material planned for the workshop, sign up if you know that you’d like to attend, and download the software prior to the workshop to save time later.

https://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/aas229_2017/modeling_ws/

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Flexible Multi‐dimensional Modeling of Complex Data in Astronomy abstract:

Recent improvements in instrumentation and the data collection process across the entire electromagnetic spectrum have resulted in an increasing amount of high quality multi-wavelength observations. The analysis of these modern data sets present several statistical challenges that require new methods and techniques to support the scientific inference. Our session will focus on the discussion of applied methodology that can be used to tackle some of these challenges. We will present tutorials based on the Sherpa-Python and IRIS tools developed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Sherpa is a Python based general modeling and fitting application that provides an environment for modeling multi-dimensional data with a set of optimization methods, including MCMC simulations for sampling posterior distributions. Sherpa provides flexible mechanisms for modeling Poisson (sparse) and Gaussian (rich) data with appropriate likelihoods, including both pre-defined models and an interface to incorporate user defined models (Python functions or external code). Sherpa can be used for modeling 1D, 2D, or 3D data, i.e., spectra, time-series, or images, and can be extended to spectral-timing and spatial-timing domains. An upcoming 'Sherpa to Astropy' Python package will allow users to use Sherpa's optimizers and error estimators seamlessly within the Astropy's modeling framework. Iris has been built on top of Sherpa for fitting SEDs to multi-wavelength data. Iris also provides a front-end to Virtual Observatory archival catalogs that can supply the appropriate data for the modeling session.

We will use IPython Notebooks to guide the participants through Sherpa-Python sessions and present a tutorial demonstration showing Iris connectivity to the archives and examples of SED modeling.

Report from the TCG