Rick Wagner

A RESTful Catalog for Simulations

To support describing data in the Computational Astrophysics Data Analysis Center (CADAC) I have designed a web service based on Representational State Transfer (REST) to catalog the simulations, data and software. This catalog was designed with three goals in mind:

• To capture sufficient detail to enable publishing to the VO as theory standards emerge.
• Be simple enough to allow small research groups to publish data and metadata using static files and a web server.
• Be usable on a day-to-day basis for tracking simulations as they evolve and get the data into the system as it's being produced.

I will present our motivation for this approach, provide a brief summary of REST, describe both the design of the web service interface and its implementation in software, and discuss our plans for CADAC.

Patrick Hennebelle

Numerical simulations and databases of molecular clouds

I will present a set of numerical MHD simulations done with the RAMSES adaptive mesh refinement code aiming to model the molecular clouds and the collapse of prestellar cores. I will illustrate how these simulations can be used to prepare or interpret observations and discuss the prospect of building a databases for numerical simulations of molecular clouds.

Patrizia Manzato

Theory in the Vobs

"We have created a database structure to store the metadata of different types of cosmological simulations (Gadget, Enzo, FLY) and the first relational database for stellar evolution models BaSTI , it includes tracks and isochrones computed with the FRANEC code. We are also studying the feasibility of including different sets of theory data and services in the VObs. Some examples of services are: the calculation on-the-fly of the profiles of some quantities for the simulated galaxy clusters, the preview of the object image opened with a VO tool and retrieve a VOTable standard format. Furthermore the BaSTI database development is the use case for studying the feasibility of storing in it the output of new simulations performed using the Grid infrastructure as demonstrating in the VO-DCA WP5. All that could be matter of discussion between the tool developers and the users, the scientists."

Franck LePetit

PDR codes in the Virtual Observatory

It is today recognized that a fast scientific return of the next generation of instruments will only be achieved if the community has access to simulation tools and theoretical services to prepare missions and interpret observations. The Virtual Observatory is a unique opportunity to publish theoretical data and provide access to legacy codes. In particular concerning the Interstellar Medium, several state-of-the-arts simulation codes have been developed to model the microphysics of interstellar medium. Among them the PDR (Photo-dominated regions) codes model the microphysics and the chemistry of interstellar molecular gas. They are used to compute observables as column density and lines intensities in molecular regions and are frequently used to interpret observations. Publishing such codes in the VO is both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge because of the complexity of the physics they model and an opportunity due to the possibility to couple them with ! other codes to refine the physical processes they model. In this talk, I will present the example of the Meudon PDR code. I will show the efforts that have been done to provide it in a VO context using the Astrogrid infrastructure. Then I will show how the works done by the VO-Theory group of the IVOA to define a standard for simulation can be used to publish results of such codes and how other parallel efforts such as those done by the Atomic and Molecular physicists to define standards can be used by these codes. I will then conclude presenting some examples of high-level interoperability coupling codes in workflows to refine the physics they model that we can expect thanks to the Virtual Observatory.

Ilian Iliev

Cosmological radiative transfer codes comparison project I will discuss the current status and results from the cosmological radiative transfer codes comparison project, which aims to check and validate the participating codes by performing a range of standardized test problems.

Emanuel Bertin

SkyMaker: astronomical image simulations made easy

I show how SkyMaker and other TERAPIX software tools can be used in the framework of the Virtual Observatory to generate virtual observations from simulation data.

Marco Spaans

AMUSE

"We propose to develop an astrophysical multipurpose software environment (AMUSE) in which different existing codes will be incorporated into a single framework. This component library will allow scientists to use combinations of existing codes to solve coupled problems. Four domains will be included: stellar dynamics, stellar evolution, hydrodynamics, radiative processes."

#Gabriella Caniglia

Gabriella Caniglia

VisIVO: Data Exploration of Complex Data

"In this talk, we show how advanced visualization tools can help the researcher in investigating and extracting information from data. The focus is on VisIVO , a novel open-source graphics application that blends high-performance multidimensional visualization techniques and up-to-date technologies to cooperate with other applications and to access remote, distributed data archives. VisIVO supports the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance in order to make it interoperable with VO data repositories."

-- GerardLemson - 18 Mar 2008