Democratizing Space 125
ContinuousPark writes: "According to this Wired News piece, Microsoft Research is working on a huge Internet database (similar to the TerraServer) that will make the data from a massive survey of the cosmos available to anyone with a Web browser. The project, called SkyServer, is the first in a series of initiatives to bring to the public "virtual telescopes". The data (about 40 terabytes) will come from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This means that, with just an Internet connection, I will be able to use the world's best telescopes and do my own research, maybe discover some celestial objects that have always been there but no one's had the (available telescope) time to look at/for them. "
Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:1)
There's this priesthood, you see, and they've put out a lot of hype about how only they can conduct the rituals....
Study some history: in the early days of Scientific Revolution there were not a lot of tenured eggheads who had never made their way in the real world.
Not research by a long shot (Score:1)
Don't be silly! If it's anything like TerraServer, what you'll get over the net is 8 bit JPEG or something like that. Far from good enough to do even the most basic research. The bare minimum would be 14- or 16-bit, uncompressed or losslessly compressed, data in multiple color bands (and astronomers do not, of course, use RGB as their color bands). Would you even know what do do with a 16 bit, 2k x 2k, H-alpha band image (say, in FITS format), even if you had it? Would you even know how to display it?
No, this will at most be an educational tool, and a fun toy for idle surfers (just like TerraServer -- it's fun to try to find your house, but that's not real work, is it?). This is not going to turn couch potatoes into research astronomers.
Celestial objects (Score:1)
Who cares ? (Score:1)
I mean, supposedly these Astonomers can predict the future by looking at the stars, but I don't see how 1/12 of the worlds population can have the same future, so I think they are con-artists. In fact sometimes my horoscope is so far out it is almost the opposite of what happened to me.
Given the fact we can never visit the places we are looking at through the telescopes (indeed some of them have ceased to exist by the time the light reaches Earth) it seems to be a total waste of time. Why not spend the money on looking into the deep oceans of planet Earth. At least that exists right now.
It worries me somewhat that the government appears to be funding research into the pseudo-science of Astronomy, while there are legitimate astrologers out there doing real useful research (Hubble, Mars polar lander) and not making outrageous claims of predicting the future, who are underfunded. I'd like to see a more intelligent allocation of these resources.
Finally am I the only one who thinks this is all a bit arrogant of mankind to try and understand the mystical workings of the universe which is likely to be beyond his comprehension anyway ? Its like trying to find the meaning of that 2-week old perl script [python.org] you wrote one morining at 3am wired up on caffiene and pizza. You know you are going to fail.
MS SkyServer? (Score:1)
Don't believe the hype (Score:1)
This is yet another publicity stunt from Microsoft, admittedly a more cunning one than usual. Astronomy is something which takes a lot of training and knowledge, and allowing every kid with a glint in their eye to pretend that they are doing something "worthwhile" is just being silly. There are far more worthwhile projects out there than this.
The only reason that MS are doing this is to give a nice cover story for them trying out some new database and server technology. They're not doing it for any other reason, and anyone fooling themselves into thinking that is both naive and deluded.
What is it with all these "do your own science" projects that keep popping up recently? Why do people insist on thinking that they can do what scientists spend years learning in their spare time at home without any clue about the subject? People, stop fooling yourselves and leave science to the scientists.
Using this for research? (Score:1)
The article has no mention of whether this will be free or a subscription service, but it goes against a lifetime's experience for me to believe Microsoft is giving away something for free. I'm sure if it is free, there will be all sorts of restrictive licensing on it (you may not use this data for any thing other than personal research, you may not publish this data etc. etc.)
Of course, I am assuming that you intend to publish the fruits of your research. After all, what is the point of doing interesting reseacrh and keeping it to yourself? This service may not be the tool to empower amateur astronomers that it potentially could be.
Posting anonymously as a protest against moderation
Microsoft Research (Score:1)
Re:What has history taught us? (Score:1)
Smart guy. Hilarious anti-Microsoft knee-jerk reaction. Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho.
D00d you forgot to call them Micro$oft. That would have made your post even more funny than it already is. Ha ha ha ha ha ROTFLMAO.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I am as much of a Linux zealot and Micro$haft hater as the next Slashdot poster, but this Micro$oft ba$hing is just played out. Why not just ignore them ? You are getting Linux zealotry/advocacy a bad name. I suggest you take a look at the Linux Advocacy HOWTO [microsoft.com] before posting again.
thank you
Re:State of the art survey (Score:1)
majority of the survey.
-Paul Komarek
Re:SkyView? (Score:1)
--
Democratizing space (Score:1)
HEY now SQLServer can "handle" 40 terrabytes! LOL (Score:1)
Basically they set up this IIS/Access/SQL Server setup which served out *terrabytes* of data, and made the most of this PR.... hey Oracle can serve TerraBytes so can we. Essentially they turned the setup into a barely useful database which acted as a HTTP: server. We got a lot of laughs over the Pointy Ones who would tell us this was ready to replace Solaris + Oracle (maybe to index and serve your MP3 collection that's about it).
Expect the 40 terrabytes figure to be repeated. MS should just focus on true clustering... at least then users can factor in tripple redundancy and fully automate the daily reboot process.
:-/
At NAB 2000 I got to play with Mac OS X on PowerPC. Very neat little UNIX OS... can't wait to see how it runs games. The Blue Box, or 'compatability mode' wasn't as fast as I thought it would be, at least running evil MS Internet Extender... slight video tearing on PPC 500 (the native browser, not MSIE, was quick tho). Should be an interesting year for UNIX...
Re:it's been done.... (Score:1)
I live only a few miles from the artic circle. Someone please give me a job so I can move!?!
-
Re:SkyView? (Score:1)
Oh wait, I think I do, but I'm not going to get on that topic today (and no, it's not a MS rant, but more generally. If you were at CFP and saw Diffie's address, you'll have some idea).
--
Re:I can't believe this (Score:1)
For example, a page can trap the File+Exit event from your browser making it impossible to quit or close a window. Who thought up that feature? Your e-mail address and other browser settings can be uploaded to sites without you realizing it. Loads of other minor security flaws that can only be solved by disabling JavaScript can be found in both IE and Netscape.
I like the core idea of the DOM and JavaScript. Too bad it's not sandboxed better.
But, to stay on topic, none of the scripty menus seem to work with Netscape 6PR1. It's probably IE-specific stuff.
--
Galeleo probe and compressed data (Score:1)
resolution to do the best astronomical research.
However, several near disasters in space probes
proved otherwise. First, when the main attenna
on the Galileo Jupiter probe failed, the backup
attenna was nearly a hundred times slower.
However, with reprogrammed compression, the probe
gets about 70% of its originally planned capacity.
Galileo re-orbits a major moon about every month
and in the meantime slowly transmits the several
dozen pictures it records each pass. Galileo is
now on a triple extended mission, because it had
survived five years beyond its original two year design time. The slow transmission time however
gobbles up large fraction of the deep space net resources.
The first three years of the Hubble Space was
a similar situation. The mis-focused mirror
required computer post-processing refocusing.
This works in some astronomical cases, but fails
elsewhere. The reprocessed pixels aren't as good as you'd like.
Astronomy has long tradition of homebrew research (Score:1)
Look at who discovers new comets and supernovea.
There is a lot of sky out there, lots of interested
amateurs, too few professional positions.
Re:Who cares ? (Score:1)
Does astrology meet these criteria? I'm not asking as a rhetorical question, I think that defining what constitutes good science is next to impossible.
These points were from Paradigms Lost by John L. Costi who borrowed them from Robert K. Merton's Sociology of Science (1976).
Forward time travel? You're soaking in it!! (Score:1)
I'll accept my nobel prize after I finish my breakfast.
Re:Who cares ? (Score:1)
The way that i intrepret different things that i've read on relativity (I'm a physics student).
All that it says is that as you approach the speed of light, your PERCEPTION of time slows down, eventually stopping at the speed of light.
Furthermore, the way I see it, ftl(faster than light) travel is dependant really on two things. 1. That gravity has a speed at which it propagates through spacetime, and 2. we can understand the method by which gravity works. But think about it though, if we were to travel at the speed of light, and then push just a little bit faster (even though, theoretically, our mass would be infinite, but let that go for the time being) we would be traveling at the same speed as our gravitational influence. Now, one of two things would happen here. Either the mach cone created would look damn cool, or, it would have disastarous consequences and kill everything behind it.
Now if gravity traveled at some speed faster than this, i don't see any reason why it would not be possible to travel ftl with respect to the rest frame. sure, we would still see the speed of light as c compared to us, but we would be able to get from one place to another because it would be massively foreshortened. but if the influence of gravity did travel ftl, then we could "let go" of gravity, kinda snap ourselves in a slingshot and kind of "surf" our own gravity wave. just a thought.
and second
While tachyons are theoritical constructs that are not forbidden by relativity, they have not yet been observed and there are several physicists that are skeptical about their existence (thorne and others, last i heard). But if they were, boy would i ever want a TDMA Cellphone (tachyon division multiple access!).
and fyi for non-physicists, a tachyon is a theoretical massless particle that can travel faster than light. it is postulated because a lot of quantum uncertainties work alot better if they exist (i.e. schrodinger's cat).
Re:I can't believe this (Score:1)
Re:Who cares ? (Score:1)
it's been done.... (Score:1)
(ayre, once, while sailing 'round the arctic circle...)
--
Time? (Score:1)
Terraserver seems to either be down more than its up or else its just that I never seem to have the free time to click reload until I get an actual response out of it.
Re:Search for bodies (Score:1)
if only it were that simple. (Score:1)
-confused
How about viewing it with Netscape? (Score:1)
//Pingo
Re:this is a great idea (Score:1)
Re:Search for bodies (Score:1)
The method you're referring to, AFAICT, is what one would use to find moving objects. For instance, that is the way they found the Shoemaker-Levy comet. It involves taking three frames of red blue and green and overlaying them on top of each other. Stationary objects will show up as white, moving objects will show up as three colors.
SDSS (Score:1)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Re:Search for bodies (Score:1)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
Re:Slowing the Internet to a crawl (Score:1)
Theres just a strong sentiment of cynicism on hear today. There'd probably be as many negative comments if it was "Microsoft decides to scrap SkyServer project". If you don't like the idea, don't go to it, but personally, I'm glad that it will be up there. One more cool thing (even if it doesn't provide a lot of functionality for me) on the net.
As far as bandwidth, did anyone notice a significant slowdown after terraserver opened? If there's too much traffic, it'll slow down, and fewer people will go to it. Its like an economics problem.
If MS does get split up, forget the apps, forget the OS, give me MS SQL Server. They're clever enough to show off their product with Terra and Sky server. Plus, SQL Server 7 is top notch. Bottom line.
Re:SkyTelNet (Score:1)
Re:I can't believe this (Score:1)
Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:1)
Well, one of the more prolific supernova discoverers is a retired Microsoft employee doing it on his spare time. IIRC, one of the Hale-Bopp discoverers was a kid. It does take time and effort (and in most cases money), but the beauty of astronomy is that a lot of it can be done by amateurs.
40 terabytes!!! (Score:1)
A note from an insider on SDSS (Score:1)
Let me give you some idea for the current state of the survey: we're taking a number of "test" strip scans of portions of the sky, and have perhaps 2 or 3 out of roughly 50 or 60 scans done so far. There's still an issue with calibrating the data, but we're working on it. The data is put on tape at the mountain, shipped by FedEx to Fermilab, and they reduce the heck out of it with pipelines specially designed for the survey. The data goes into a database at FNAL, and a copy is sent to JHU. I believe that Microsoft would work with a copy of the JHU database. Some of the JHU astronomers are building a friendly querying system so that people can ask questions like:
Give me info on all the stellar objects in this tiny area of the sky, with colors (g-r) 2.0, and with no close companions
The database will also allow people to download little "postage-stamp" sized pictures of the sky which are cut out around all detected objects.
You can see some examples of pictures (and detected objects) at:
[rit.edu]
http://a188-l009.rit.edu/richmond/sdss/showtell
As another poster stated, we look at each piece of the sky only once (well, small sections twice), so finding motions or variability from this data alone won't be easy.
The survey won't be finished, in my opinion, until sometime around 2003 or so (for the imaging half of the survey -- the spectroscopic section of the survey will take another few years after that). There is some period of a year or so -- it's rather vague at this point -- before data is released to the public. I'm not sure if it's a year or two after the photons are collected, or a year or two after they have been calibrated and placed into the database. It's possible that a small subset of the commissioning data might be made available sometime before then, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I'd be happy to answer questions about the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, if someone wants to set up an
interview mechanism (hint, hint).
Re:I can't believe this (Score:1)
BTW, does the erroneous javascript crash Mozilla as well? Might make a nice bugzilla bug.
Re:Search for bodies (Score:1)
Not totally true. There are various surveys of the sky that count the distribution of various objects throughout the universe. For example, distribution of galaxies in a 3D space, and what their structural distribution is, such that theories of inflation can be formulated.
I don't know exactly what data is included with the Sloan survey. I should, though, because I saw some spectrographs of the first Sloan data a few weeks ago (they were many months old by then). If Sloan is full of spectrums, then you've got nice spectrums of the whole sky, which means ALOT of data to process. And alot of information is included in the spectrum. for a 2-D map of the sky, and a spectrum at each point, that's a 3D data set. Lots of info can be extracted from this.
Re:State of the art survey (Score:1)
I wonder if there was a particular choice to their section of the sky being surveyed, or if it was mainly observ/operational requirements.
Since you mentioned the significant additional work that could/may/will be done on these images, and the issues with their auto-processing, I wonder if they will also release raw(-er) data for better reduction, if nothing else. I can see plenty of potential shortcomings with their, in some areas, one-size-fits-all "pipelines." Seems like better, more frustrating by-hand work on many of these image strips will often be necessary. And massive deconvolution reps on terabytes of images...yum...and tedium...wow. And heck, people will be doing statistical surveys of these data for decades.
BTW, kudos to Hemos for a (rare) "real" astronomy info post, albeit under the guise of a Microsoft story.... And seriously, thanx to, in this case, the resident astronomers for taking the time to give info and the straight scoop on the story(ies). (Helpful for those of us who don't keep up on every line of astrophysical research underway.)
As for the comment on success of distributed public image processing, I dunno in this case; analyses of part of LMC are far less sexy than being part of the search for LGM.
Kurtis
Re:Slowing the Internet to a crawl (Score:1)
On their "Data Processing Challanges" page:
But as has been said, it's unlikely that the full database will be available to individuals (through SDSS or even less likely, Microsoft (bandwidth/media=$) Heck, do you know what the fragile, insured, etc. postal rates would be for 25TB worth of DATs!?) :)
Cheers,
K
I think this is Great... (Score:1)
I love the idea of being able to look at pictures of the entire sky! It may not be a great tool for Astronomy research but it will be a great tool for learning more about constalations and such. It will also be great for getting more people interested in Astronomy. I applaud Microsoft for getting involved in these really neat projects, whatever their motives are.
Plus, being able to look at Area51 was pretty neat. Perhaps we'll get a good view of something interesting in the Sky? Perhaps some closeups of Mir
forge
Microsoft and Research? (Score:1)
If Microsoft finances or owns this kind of database, and it is successful, and many people start using it - how long do you think you will be able to visit this site with Netscape, or Opera?
Long version:
For some years now Microsoft has been sending their people throughout the world collecting data, old arts collections, exclusive online publishing rights from museums and historical sites, and so on. Of course, Microsoft realizes that they cannot hold their monopoly on operating systems forever, and so they are looking for other hooks into the market.
This would not be such a bad thing at all if Microsoft was a fair player. But Microsoft's history has been known to buy, misuse or extinguish new technology just for the sake of forcing new Windows versions and applications into the market (which nobody would actually have needed, if Microsoft hadn't created an artificial "need"). And that is bad.
So: Don't be surprised if in 2001, this 40 Terabyte database tells you you need to install the latest ActiveZ plugins and the latest Internet Explorer 2000 to view the data. And, oh yes - you'll need Microsoft Wallet 2000 of course. It's a free service, after all.
I wouldn't.
</black_vision>
Oh, wonderful, just what the world needs. (Score:1)
Sorry about the rant, normal service will be resumed after imbibing a beer or two.
Re:What has history taught us? (Score:1)
That's an easy one. Didn't you notice the timing of Terraserver coincided with the release of MS SQL Server 7.0? This is the same thing. They are trying to show that their software is scalable, fast, robust, other buzzword, more buzzwords, etc.
They are trying to show off their software and the Northwind sample database really doesn't show off the ability to store multiple gigs of data.
It was done in MAY 97!! (MS WAS NOT FIRST!) (Score:1)
Well I go to Ryerson, and interestingly enough, I have heard that this multi-terrabyte web server isn't currently being put to much use, maybe we can suggest something to faculty... any ideas?
Re:What has history taught us? (Score:1)
I want to see more of this kind of stuff from Sun and other large companies of comparable scale.
Re:Time? (Score:1)
Re:Search for bodies (Score:1)
Not so, so-called "virtual observatories" are becoming a hot topic in astronomy. See, for example this "vision statement" [caltech.edu] for the Virtual Observatories of the Future [caltech.edu] conference being held at Caltech in June (which I may be going to, if I can get my ass into gear). See also the Digital Sky Project [digital-sky.org], which has links to the major efforts underway. (Note that the surveys don't even need to be digital: the single most useful project in astronomical history is probably the Palomar Sky Survey, orignally undertaken in the 1950s.)
A quote from the vision statement: For the first time in the history of astronomy, we will have data sets whose full information content greatly exceeds the original purposes for which the data were obtained. This opens the new field of data-mining of digital sky surveys, using the data for newly conceived projects and exploring the vast data parameter spaces. It is inevitable that the previously poorly explored parts of the observable parameter space will contain new discoveries and surprises.
And again: We will be able to tackle some major problems with an unprecedented accuracy, e.g., mapping of the large-scale structure of the universe, the structure of our Galaxy, etc. The unprecedented size of the data sets will enable searches for extremely rare types of astronomical objects (e.g., high-redshift quasars, brown dwarfs, etc.) and may well lead to surprising new discoveries of previously unknown types of objects or new astrophysical phenomena. Combining surveys done at different wavelengths, from radio and infrared, through visible light, ultraviolet, and x-rays, both from the ground-based telescopes and from space observatories, would provide a new, panchromatic picture of our universe, and lead to a better understanding of the objects in it. These are the types of scientific investigations which were not feasible with the more limited data sets of the past.
SkyView was first! (Score:1)
I find this absolutely offensive! I started working on SkyView [nasa.gov] nearly seven years ago! The very first web interface went live in March of 1994. Since 1996, SkyView [nasa.gov] has been called itself "The Internet's Virtual Telescope."
I can understand that Microsoft is trying to generate enthusiasm and good PR for this, but it shouldn't be at the expense of accuracy and truth.
If you don't feel like waiting for Microsoft to make good and want to see pretty pictures (that also mean something to the professionals) check out SkyView [nasa.gov]. It already contains the Digitized Sky Survey which is an all-sky optical survey comprised of the Palomar plates made back in the 50's for the northern hemisphere and the SERC Southern Sky Survey for the southern hemisphere.
In addition, SkyView [nasa.gov] goes beyond the optical and has dozens of surveys ranging from radio wavelengths to gamma-rays.
For those who are curious as to how it works, you type in a coordinate or name of object you're interested in as well as the survey(s) you want to view. Your request then is processed and the image is literally created on the fly to match your specifications. For example, in the case of the Digitized Sky Survey, your request will typically be a composite of 10s of compressed images mosaicked together to produce a final image. This is also the reason why it may take up to a minute to display an image (it's a lot of geometric manipulation).
Also, as to not leave out other possibilities, if all you're looking for is optical images, the Space Telescope Science Institute [stsci.edu] has a DSS archive [stsci.edu]. It contains First and Second generation images ( SkyView [nasa.gov] currently only has the First), though it cannot mosaic across different plates whereas SkyView [nasa.gov] can.
Finally, yes, I have a bit a vested interest in this. I wrote 95-99% of the code for SkyView [nasa.gov] up until I left a year ago (now in the capable hands of Laura MacDonald with Tom McGlynn as the principal investigator and originator).
Someone or some group may come along and do it better, but I hope they don't forget those who came before them and are here while they talk of what they'll do in the future.
Besides, who do you trust for your astronomy, NASA or Microsoft? (no Martian spacecraft were harmed in the creation of SkyView [nasa.gov])
--Keith Scollick scollick@stsci.edu
Re:SkyView was first! (Score:1)
this is a great idea (Score:1)
Really though, it is always good to share knowledge. This will give amateur astronomers and anyone interested access to data that would otherwise take a very long time to obtain, or that they may not have been able to obtain on their own at all. This provides the possibility of new things being discovered, and more research being done more easily.
Name it, then find it? (Score:1)
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
Re:SDSS (shhhhhh -- it's overrated!) (Score:1)
Re:SDSS (shhhhhh -- it's overrated!) (Score:1)
First (Score:1)
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The rules and exceptions of outrageous moderation
Or to take arms against a sea of flames
And by structuring end them. To troll -- to whore
No more; and by a test to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural mistakes
That Slashdot is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To troll -- to whore.
To flame -- perchance to bomb: aye, there's the rub!
For in that post of flame what flames may come
When we have shuffled of this moderation scheme,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
that makes calamity of so long lists.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of karma whoring
Th' console operators wrong, the linked sites crash,
The pangs of despis'd
The insolence of cowards, and the spurns
That patient posting of crafted flamebait takes
When he himself might his quietus make
Who would this zealot site bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary language,
But that the dread of something different
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No negative karma returns -- puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make anonymous cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn away
And lose the name of AC.
Wow... (Score:1)
Re:SkyView? (Score:1)
Re:publicity stunt (Score:1)
Re:Travelling at near light speed (Score:1)
Re:Astrology is proven by science (Score:1)
Science should check the results of predictions, and if the predictions are wrong, use these results to correct or disprove the theory.
Admittedly a lot of scientists can be too arrogant to admit that their theory might be wrong. I don't think they deserve to be called scientists either (even if they do turn out to be right).
Re:Who cares ? (Score:1)
This essentially invloves disproving a theory without tellling anyone, finding an experiment that will prove your theory and disproved established theory, and publishing the experiment, noting surprise about how it seems to contradict established theory. Then wait a few years and publish a theory about how to explain it.
Re:Who cares ? (Score:1)
--
Hey, NASA did this years ago... (Score:2)
Go to the NASA Digital Sky Survey [nasa.gov] and play around.
Proprietary Universe (Score:2)
-
NASA's one year data embargo (Score:2)
releases is the for the use of the principal
investigator. This allows them priority publication in reward for years of prepatory work. After a year, the data is generally
freely available at the cost of copying,
and the competence of the data archive centre (sometimes not too competent).
There are exceptions depending on principle investigator. Lot of Mars pathfinder imagery
was posted on the web within days of its acquisition.
Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:2)
Yeah! And no singing unless you've had years of voice lessons. And no dancing unless you've had training. And unless you've got at least a Master's Degree in English Lit, don't try writing anything. No playing chess unless you're a Grand Master.
And most of all, no playing around with computers and programming and stuff like that unless you've got an accredited Computer Science degree, darn it.
Sheesh.
publicity stunt (Score:2)
Maybe this is also going to be useful for the astronomy community. I would put more stake into a publically funded project that's supervised and implemented by astronomers and without any kind of commercial angle. Even today, though, I suspect that anybody who is interested in getting data can easily get it over the Internet, in the worst case by sending E-mail.
Re:Search for bodies (Score:2)
Absolutely. The only way to do anything useful, other than plot the positions of certain objects in space, you need to have a telescope and lots of time. You need to look at spectra, measure variability in magnitudes, etc. for stars. For bodies like comets and asteroids, this is totally useless. For those, you need to have time with live data. The only way to discover these things is by taking successive images of the same area, and checking to see whats moving between the images (they call it blinking).
Other than being a neat project to look at the stars, this has very little scientific research. The only thing I could come up for a use of it is to wait 100 years, and do another survey and measure the proper motions of the stars more precisely between the two images. This is simply just a neat toy.
Don't get me wrong however, I'm very happy that they're generating astronomy awareness.
Re:Slowing the Internet to a crawl (Score:2)
umm... you're just a fool if you actually believe that you can attribute lack of bandwidth to terraserver. I think there are more worthy targets like the mp3 revolution, and other warez.
Re:What has history taught us? (Score:2)
Re:Computers are cool, but.... (Score:2)
Also note that I am using the ultra cheap method of CCD imaging - a Connectix QuickCam.
I did not mean for my posting to suggest that Celestron is the only game out there. I am just very familar with their equipment. Sorry if it came out that way.
Re:State of the art survey (Score:2)
Well, could this be made into an app like SETI@Home? A nice distributed app that runs on all sorts of computers with some pretty screensaver (maybe of the current pics being processed) might be something people really like. Even just a catalogue would be pretty extensive. But if a whole lot of people each proccess one picture, it might be worth it.
-cpd
Re:Search for bodies (Score:2)
Not necessarily. One of the single most useful sky surveys ever performed was the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey which took deep photographs of the entire northern hemisphere sky in the 1950s. Those photos were re-analyzed by folks at the US Naval Observatory in the 1990s to create the largest database of stars ever created: 526,230,881 stars, all in the Milky Way. In addition, the Hubble team digitized all the POSS photos and put them on the web, which has generated an explosion of new research from folks who may not have had access to copies of the old photographic plates.
The Sloan survey will do a similar thing, but it is digital and can detect objects much fainter. By the end we may have a catalog of galaxies outside our Milky Way which rivals the size of the USNO stellar database.
USNO database: http://ftp.nofs.navy.mil/projects/pmm/
Note, I can't say much about the Microsoft effort. I just know that NASA/USNO work with the POSS have been enormously valuable to astronomers, and I hope that Microsoft makes this new access method for the Sloan Survey as useful.
Telescopes online (Score:2)
http://www.eia.brad.ac.uk/rti/automated.html
for a list of some examples. I don't have the link here but IIRC there was a story about 6 months back about a school using one of these to discover a new comet.
SkyTelNet (Score:2)
The system would also queue observations, keeping copies of the observations at multiple locations. For future observations, the system would be smart enough to match multiple observation queries into a single observation task. A thousand people wanting to watch a particular astronomic event might be able to have a single telescope take one observation, and then "slice and dice" it to provide each of them with exactly what they were looking for.
I had wanted to do this as a senior project in college, but the University of Miami (Florida) is not strong on astronomy, and I had a hard enough time getting anyone to understand my idea, and no luck finding a professor to oversee the project (sigh). I am glad to see this though; I guess all great ideas find a way into the light. If anyone at Microsoft, or anyone else wants to know more about my ideas, I can send you the early drafts describing it.
(For anyone doubting my chronology, just consult the list of well known ports, SKYTELNET has been on the list for about ten years now...)
Re:What has history taught us? (Score:2)
Yep just get right out of OS's and Software and focus on the non-monopolized sphere of SkyMapping. Lots of money to be made there!
Some of these things MS does have nothing to do with how to extend windows to every desktop. Some of them are just pure Geek. Bill is a geek, even if he is a misguided geek. A lot of the MS employees are big geeks (especially the research guys). Give us all a break from trying to be the first one in a
forge
Re:Who cares ? (Score:2)
Meaning, what does a completely commercial company like Micro~1 hope to gain from setting up such a server ? Makes me wonder ...
A lot of experiance in setting up an extremely large web-based DB with a potentially large user base. I'm sure they'll be trying out new stuff, and it makes great PR to claim that Win2K can run all this stuff. Plus, it's just great PR in general.
Re:Who cares ? (Score:2)
The Theory of Relativity does not say anything about time travel, and about travelling faster than light it proves nothing, that's why it's called "theory".
General Relativity does say something about time travel - it says that it is theoretically possible. The most obvious method is using wormholes and time dilation, but you can also acheive a similar effect using a sufficiently large rotating cylindrical mass - a cosmic string comes to mind. The mass of the cylinder drags spacetime around itself so that the time axis is swapped with one of the spatial ones, and time travel becomes possible. Of course, this is incredibly dangerous, but possible in theory.
And tachyons aren't forbidden by relativity IIRC. At zero energy they have infinite velocity, and as they gain energy they slow down, asymptotically approaching the speed of light from the other side. A tachyon can never become a tardion and vice versa, but both can exist under relativity. Tachyons are probably going to be ruled out by quantum effects however - superstring theory is free from the need for them.
Re:Astrology is proven by science (Score:2)
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
Re:Astrology is proven by science (Score:2)
Then you have already lost the argument. For a hypothesis to become a theory it has to have rigorous peer review and be tested. If results are not conclusive then it is rejected. I checked my horoscope and it was wrong. I have friends who have bad horoscopes as well. To me that is enough evidence to show that there is a fundamental problem with the hypothesis. It is therefore not a theory and is flawed
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
Re:I can't believe this (Score:2)
That way, badly written code doesn't crash your browsers, but most importantly: you avoid those annoying popup windows on porn sites... :)
Re:Who cares ? (Score:2)
Einstein (and others) proved that time travel is an impossibility, and we can never travel faster than light.
Wrong. The Theory of Relativity does not say anything about time travel, and about travelling faster than light it proves nothing, that's why it's called "theory". It does explain macrocosmic events better than other theories, but that doesn't mean there won't be a better one eventually. In fact, it is totally unfit to explain microcosmic stuff.
(because we would explode, or something)
Nope. According to the theory of relativity, attaining the speed of light is not possible for an object with non-zero resting mass because it would require an infinite amount of energy.
Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:2)
As for the rest of us, what's wrong with looking at pretty pictures that don't even show nude women?
Re:State of the art survey (Score:2)
Refresh my memory; should it actually be able to get down to 25 magnitudes V filter? I thought Keck reached just a shade over 26, with almost an order greater collection area, among other things.
Well - despite their choice of asinh magnitude scheme, the quasar they found at z>5 had conventional V around 24.5 so I'll stand by my figure until someone pushes me off! Why they couldn't have used AB magnitudes like any reasonable person ... or maybe these asinh magnitudes are the same - they certainly sound similar (linear flux) but I'm about 1.5 years out of date now so I'm a little less certain.
I wonder if there was a particular choice to their section of the sky being surveyed, or if it was mainly observ/operational requirements.
My recollection is that this is an observational limitation - one telescope can see about half the 'sky' but you really only want to image stuff which is above you - as soon as you point more than 30' from straight up, the image quality goes down as you are looking through more of the atmosphere, and to my knowledge there are not adaptive optics on the SDSS imaging system.
Since you mentioned the significant additional work that could/may/will be done on these images, and the issues with their auto-processing, I wonder if they will also release raw(-er) data for better reduction, if nothing else. I can see plenty of potential shortcomings with their, in some areas, one-size-fits-all "pipelines." Seems like better, more frustrating by-hand work on many of these image strips will often be necessary. And massive deconvolution reps on terabytes of images...yum...and tedium...wow. And heck, people will be doing statistical surveys of these data for decades.
Definitely. I strongly hope that they release raw data (FITS format or whatever) - see my other post here [slashdot.org] for more discussion of things to do. On the other hand, a commercial entity like MS may be less interested in real science and more in disceminating pretty pictures...
If the raw data isn't forthcoming I would be very surprised though - once the initial 'safe' period is over so the professional astronomers can stake their claim to the best and latest data, it makes little sense to restrict the data. As Skyview proved, general access to lots of data is a good thing, whether you depend on the data for your next round of research funding or whether you are merely interested in a little home study.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:I can't believe this (Score:2)
No good. Just try browsing http://www.research.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com] with Netscape, and watch how fast it crashes. (Hint, it's the JavaScript.)
Turn off JavaScript and search for "astronomy" and you'll get the papers....
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Re:Who cares ? (Score:2)
Given your astrology comment you must be trolling but what the hell....
The reason is called pure science. Research for the sake of research not for some tangible / marketable end. Sure astronomy may not affect your life right now but down the road, who knows.
Take say, Galvani, if he hadn't touched a frogs leg with a piece of metal and thought, "Cool the sucker jumped! I wonder why?" You would be scripting perl on an abacus. Astronomy may produce the basic research that will lead to any number of useful developments. See the warphole article from a few days back.
This has always been the problem with with pure research. No results, no funding, no funding, who knows what were missing.
Search for bodies (Score:3)
Doesn't the search for heavenly bodies require analysis over time, and not simply an image? I mean, for one thing, most of what we're discovering these days aren't visual elements anyway; they're things like extrasolar planets, quasars, and black holes, things that you can't really find with a visual survey of the sky. About the only real visual things you might spot are comets and/or asteroids, but detection of those bodies generally requires a bit more than simply a sky survey, and you'll still need photographs of that area over time.
Don't get me wrong, I think this a great idea. I just don't want to get amateur astronomers' hopes up. A map of the sky is great for learning, but one still needs the tools of the trade to do real research and discovery.
Democratizing space? (Score:3)
Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:3)
If you do the rituals -- follow the scientific method, etc -- then you are a scientist. Without the rituals, you aren't one. It's not that scientists poo-poo amateur scientists -- that's fairly rare, in my experience. What scientists have little patience for is the way-too-common nutcases who construct elaborate buzzword-laden "theories" and expect to be taken seriously, and then scream about "elitism" when their "theories" get shredded.
Coming up with a theory does not make one a scientist.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
Re:Slowing the Internet to a crawl (Score:3)
So bandwidth is not an issue, simply because the people setting up the projects are smart enough to know the extremity of their data and their bandwidth cap.
I'm actually pretty surprised that this got moderated up.
Computers are cool, but.... (Score:3)
For the price of a brand new all-the-bells-and-whistles-included Linux box, you can get a top of the line amateur telescope. Yet you don't have to spend that much if you don't want to. But do get a good one and not some department store piece of crap. Celestron [celestron.com] makes some of the best ones out there I think.
What you will see is so astounding you will never ever forget it. You are seeing it with your own eyes - not some camera. I still remember the first time I saw Saturn 22 years ago. It was and still is something to sit and stare at for hours.
Yeah, I take pictures with my scope, and I stick em up on the web, but well, they don't compare to really seeing something for yourself. I guess when it comes to this I am a Luddite.
I guess a good way to put it are the porno webcams. Sure, it is fun to watch, but nothing beats being there.
I do like the idea, don't get me wrong. But seriously, if you are the least bit interested in astronomy, do yourself a favor and buy a real telescope. The experience is worth it.
Slowing the Internet to a crawl (Score:3)
So if you really want the data and want to do meaningful data mining on it, I suggest you buy it on tape, and get them to snail mail it to you. Microsoft had better think carefully about what's doing to the rest of the net before it tries to offer the data to anyone who asks.
Re:State of the art survey (Score:3)
Well, could this be made into an app like SETI@Home? A nice distributed app that runs on all sorts of computers with some pretty screensaver (maybe of the current pics being processed) might be something people really like. Even just a catalogue would be pretty extensive. But if a whole lot of people each proccess one picture, it might be worth it.
There are possibly some applications that could be automated, such as building a complete two-point correlation function for the clustering of the objects in the field, or maybe trying to categorize all the objects by colour, redshift and position into groupings in space and colour. However, most of these tasks are doable in a reasonable amount of computing time - say two-weeks computation on an UltraSparc machine (although the two-point correlation function is an O(n^2) problem, that requires 10^16 comparisons at a rough estimate, with maybe 10^8 comparisons a second, that would require ... umm ... err ... about 3 years of CPU time). So yes - possibly an automated tool might well be worth it. I strongly suspect that few astronomers would bother to do the correlation function for the whole field at all scales, and would settle for looking at the function for scales up to around 4 degrees separation on the sky (that's much bigger than the largest known cluster of galaxies).
However, looking at the automatically processed picture strips, I see all sorts of problems with background level correction (the background appears to be wavey in these pictures [sdss.org] so there is definitely room for improvement). Modern astronomical analysis often requires significant time spent on looking at a particular frame of interest - I spent over a year examining [lanl.gov] and refining [lanl.gov] an image of a pair of Quasars as part of my thesis - so my feeling is that there is much to be gained by picking an object which interests you, possibly from a Radio or X-ray survey, and following it up with the SDSS survey here. With this much data I think you can be assured that the Astronomy community will get to grips with the important statistical analysis on it's own. What it won't be able to do is follow up every field, every interesting quasar or galaxy and really really work on it. It may be possible to see gravitational lensing (although it won't be very clear since the point spread function will be around an arcsec) or do some funky image processing to try and deconvolve the images to recover more detail. In fact, there are lots of things to play with which are unlikely to ever get done on every part of this image data, so grab yourself a copy of IRAF [rl.ac.uk] or Source Extractor [rit.edu] and go play.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I can't believe this (Score:3)
SkyView? (Score:4)
If you're not an astronomer, try out the non-astronomer page [nasa.gov], pick your wavelengths, and browse around the sky. Hopefully NASA's servers can handle a Slashdotting.
--
SDSS (shhhhhh -- it's overrated!) (Score:4)
and go home, since they were gonna do it all. Nice to see they're finally doing something.
What burns me is that sessions devoted many hours to all the CS PhD theory talks during *astronomy*
sessions about all the details of how the data would be stored and made available.
Looks like when push came to shove they had to make a quick deal with Microsoft.
SDSS is not the first sky survey that is made available online, nor will they really ever be the
pioneer, except through revisionist history. I note that one of their press releases links to
a preprint from a week ago. They fit a spheroid model to the halo and come up with a flattening
parameter. Cool, I published my fit six years ago with the APS at Minnesota. Got the same
number. Actually, my statistics were better. Did I get the professional courtesy of a reference? No.
At least I credited those who determined this parameter before me.
The groundbreaking work in sky surveys was done by the APM in Cambridge, and others doing this
kind of work include SuperCosmos in Edinburgh, the APS in Minnesota, DPoss at Caltech, and the
digital sky survey at Space Telescope. Most have had their data online for ten years and have
papers on their results.
The more expensive a project, the higher the incentive to do science by press release.
I guess I just get pissed off when I see Sloan and Hubble take credit for something that has been
known for years merely by adding a pretty picture.
State of the art survey (Score:5)
For those of you who don't keep tabs on every astronomical survey underway, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey covers a quarter of the entire sky down to fairly faint magnitudes - at a guess to about 25 magnitude in V (the faintest object you can see at night away from street lights is about 5th magnitude, and for every extra 2.5 magnitudes, the objects get 10 times fainter). While this data does not go as deep as the Hubble Deep Field, the sheer number of objects covered (and more than half of them will be galaxies, since the number of galaxies visible at these faint magnitudes is several factors more than the number of stars in our own galaxies) means that this data allows a far more thorough analysis of the clustering of galaxies in the universe around us. Since this survey is not just imaging these objects but is also measuring the spectra using a grism (basically a series of prisms arranged linearly across the field), you can extrapolate the position on the sky and obtain an estimate of distance from the redshift. So you can do some fairly heavy duty astronomy with this data once it gets released, and the sheer amount of information means that it will be many years before it is all properly worked through. Picking a particular area of sky for study will almost certainly yield something new.
Of course, you can just go window shopping through this data for pretty pictures. And there should be lots ...!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
images already available (Score:5)