# Presentation: 168170

## The Astrophysics Data and Information System

- Presented by the Astrophysics Data Executive Committee (ADEC)

## Astrophysics Data & Information Services

**MAP**
**SWAS**
**Planck**
**Herschel**
**SIRTF**
**SOFIA**
**2MASS**
**HST**
**GALEX**
**FUSE**
**Chandra**
**XMM-Newton**
**BeppoSAX**
**RXTE/Swift**
**INTEGRAL**
**GLAST**

***Mission ***
***Science***
***Centers***

***Wavelength Focused***
***Science Archive***
***Centers***

***Integrating Services***

***Permanent Archive***

## Mission Centers and Archive Centers

**SAO**** **
**Active: Chandra **
**Archival: HEASARC with GSFC**
**Integrating: ADS**

**GSFC**
**Active: e.g. RXTE, INTEGRAL**
**Archival: HEASARC, CMB/submm with IRSA**
**Integrating: SkyView, ADC**

***A given Organization may host one or more type of Center***

***Types of Centers *****:****  Active Mission Centers - support active mission users**
**  ****Archive Centers - maintain data and support archival users**
**  ****Integrating Services - support users across different centers**

**STScI**
**Active: Hubble & FUSE**** ****Archival: MAST**

**IPAC**
**Active: SIRTF, 2MASS**
**Archival: IRSA**
**Integrating: NED**

**Notes:**
Typo - MainTAN

## NASA Data Centers Holdings

***Data***

**X-ray**
**&**
******-ray**

**EUV**
**UV**

**Optical**

**IR**

**mm**

**Services**

## NASA Data HoldingsApril 2001 

## Data Growth

**The total area of astronomical telescopes in m****2****, and CCDs measured in Gigapixels, over the last 25 years. The number of pixels and the data double every year.**** **

- Data volumes increasing 10 to 100 times over the next decade
- More missions - SMEX, MIDEX
- More science to be extracted from each observation
- New and more complex data types and inter-relationships
- Data centers with fixed budgets struggling to keep pace with volume

**NGST**

**HST**

## State of the System

- The current system is vigorous:
- Productive: new research and results
- Responsive to mission needs,
- observation planning, analysis support
- Heavily used by the community
- Highly rated (MO/DA Senior Review)
- Technically robust:
- coordination
- inter-operability
- up-to-date technology
- Of the top 200 cited papers in 2000, ~25% used NASA archival data
- The system is ready for the next level: NVO

## ARCHIVE USAGE & GROWTH

- NASA’s astrophysics archive data usage is dramatically increasing

**ADS**

**NED**

**HST/MAST**

**IRSA**

## Recent Science Results 

- Highest redshift SN at z=1.7 from HST archival study (Riess et al 2001)

- 2MASS catalog searches for Brown Dwarfs using IRSA nets new stellar class and dozens of brown dwarfs (Kirkpatrick et al)

## Newly Discovered Middle-Mass Black Hole- 20 Years in the Making!

- La Parola et al. (2001) combine X-ray data from the EINSTEIN, ROSAT, ASCA and BeppoSAX satellites to examine the variability of the mysterious source X-9 discovered in the field of galaxy M81

- HRI X-ray contours mark the source X-9 in an optical image of the M81 field

- X-ray lightcurve of X-9 spanning 20 years

- Extreme variability demonstrates that the X-9 source is most likely a new member of the poorly understood class of “middle-mass”  black holes, `weighing in’ at  ~130 solar masses - It actually lives in a dwarf galaxy companion to M81

- Newly Discovered Middle-Mass Black Hole- 20 Years in the Making!

## Results of June 2000 Senior Review

## History of Data Center Coordination

- Loss of the SOMOWG in 1995 removed community input and forum to coordinate activities
- An *adhoc* Astrophysics Data Centers Coordination Committee (ADCCC) established by the major data centers in 1997 to
*Exchange information about ongoing activities*
*Improve interoperability and avoid duplication of effort*
*Establish and/or enhance standards *
*Share development of data access tools and utilities*
*Advise HQ on guidelines for mission archive requirements and data standards*
- The ADCCC proved effective in improving interoperability and avoiding duplication of effort, but
*ADCCC had no formal role in NASA HQ management structure*

## Interoperability and Coordination between  NASA archives resulting from ADCCC

- All  of NASA's data  services have explicit cross-links on their home pages
- Relevant services at all centers use NED/SIMBAD name-coordinate resolution
- SIMBAD/ADS/NED  created the "Bibliographic  Reference Code"  that is used worldwide  by astronomers, publishers and databases  to identify and link published papers
- Linking journal articles from ADS to original data (NED, ADC, MAST, CXC) and vice versa (MAST, NED, CXC) - HEASARC coming soon
- HEASARC and NED provide seamless access to VizieR at CDS and ADC
- IRSA Oasis interface links to data from nine NASA and external data centers
- CXC provides remote access to Chandra archive from HEASARC Browse
- NED links to archival data associated with objects
- AstroBrowse general search tool for all astronomical resources
- MAST seamlessly links to HEASARC ROSAT catalogs and data
- HEASARC-MAST jointly provides the EUVE data archive
- ADC IMPRESS visualizes observations and links to data at different archives
- HEASARC SkyView links to images at several NASA and other archives
- SIRTF observation planner (SPOT) accesses data from multiple NASA archives (IRSA, NED and MAST)

## History of Data Center Coordination - Continued

- In Spring of 2001 HQ requested a program plan from ADCCC
- As part of this plan the ADCCC recommended the need for more effective coordination and priority assessment across archive centers with the following elements:
- NASA HQ Code S Program Executive for all astrophysics data center and archive activities
- Astrophysics Data Centers Executive Committee (ADEC) to provide a HQ recognized forum to coordinate the various MO&DA activities
- A reformed SOMOWG-like group to provide community feedback and prioritize activities that includes
-  user community representatives
-  data and information system experts

## Astrophysics Data Centers Executive Committee (ADEC)

**Membership**
**A senior representative from each archive and integration center ****(ADS, HEASARC, IRSA, MAST, NED, NSSDC)**
**A senior representative from each major mission center****(CXC, GLAST, SIRTF, HST)**
**The cognizant OSS program executive (ex officio)**
**International representatives (ex officio)****(Director of CDS, others TBD)**** **
**Chair-person**
**Chair rotates among representatives with 1 year term of office**
**Coordinator and consensus builder**
**Advocate for the ADEC activities within the community**
**The ADEC meets regularly (~3 times per year) and has frequent telecons (monthly) to**
**Exchange information**
**Improve archive inter-operability**
**Develop standards for data and software**
**Avoid duplication of effort**
**Provide input to HQ on programmatic needs and planning**

## ADEC Current Activities

- Inter-operability technical working group (ITWG)
- Increase cross archive links to provide a seamless single system (Lead: Tom McGlynn)
- Necessary precursor to NVO
- Bibliography working group
- Work with journals to provide key words, object lists and data sets IDs to enable journal-archive cross-links (Lead: Eichhorn)
- FITS standards
- Assist and advice new missions (e.g. SIRTF, GALEX) in adopting  FITS conventions (Lead: Pence)

## ADEC ITWG

- The top level goal is to provide seamless (one stop shopping) access to all the NASA astrophysics catalog and data services, irrespective of where the information is located
- Charter Requirements
- All services will be accessible via standard protocols
- Access will be via the existing user interfaces
- Results will appear consistent with the interface that initiated the request
- Attribution of data to original site will be clearly stated
- Phase 1: Consistent interlinking of NASA archives
- Standardize the methodology for inter-linking
- Develop and implement profiles describing services and linking concepts
- Establish data discovery tools
- Modify existing interfaces to link consistently across archive boundaries
- Phase 2: Develop fully integrated interfaces to NASA archives

## ADEC ITWG

- Status: Bi-weekly telecons among centers.  Prototype profiles and discovery services being created.  Web Services Description Language and other technologies being explored
- Schedule: Phase 1 may take anywhere from 6 months to over a year depending upon resources allocated for it
- No explicit resources available for this project, rather the data centers may reallocate existing resources to accomplish this - with the view it leads to less duplication of effort, an overall cost saving and a more efficient system - but this may not be sufficient
- NVO resources may be needed to fully implement this activity

## An Archive Fellowship Program

- The ADEC believes that an Astrophysics Archive Postdoctoral Fellowship  Program would help to drive the interoperability and services of the current data archive system
- would also be an essential component in driving the NVO science requirements
- Modeled on the highly successful Hubble and Chandra programs
- Fellowship program structure
- We would envision this as 2 or 3 year post-doctoral fellowships, that would be undertaken at an institution of the proposer's choice
- The focus of the proposal would be to utilize data or services from at least three different NASA archives or services (e.g. HEASARC, MAST and NED) to perform multi-wavelength research on large data sets
- A fellow would elect to be sponsored by one of the existing NASA astrophysics data centers, which would coordinate any new resources or capabilities that might be required to enable this research
- The fellow would be encouraged to perform the research at one of the archive centers, or visit the center a regular intervals (e.g. as a summer visitor)
-  Perhaps 2-3 fellowships per year selected by the same peer review group reviewing the ADP and LTSA programs would be the most efficient means to implement this program

## Summary

- The NASA data centers are ready for the NVO challenge
- Ground breaking work in archive and service cross-linking
- Pioneering new developments, robust s/w tested by every-day operations (Data Model at CXC; metadata definition at HEASARC, IRSA and MAST)
- SAWG is a key component in the new astrophysics data Information structure
- Setting priorities between senior reviews
- Communicate community feedback to ADEC
- ADEC is the “executive” providing a single overall coordinated approach
- Already effective in making things happen