SIEminar: "Making Astronomical Databases with VO tools",
by Jorge A Pérez Prieto, Tuesday 24 July 12:30
When dealing with lage quantities of images or large catalogs, it becomes
necessary to create a database to organize and query this huge amount of
data. The effort to develop those databases could be big, but fortunatelly
the Virtual Observatory (VO) offers several tools to create and search our
own databases. In this SIEminar, Jorge will show us the available VO tools
and will explain us how to create personal databases with them.
La Palma Supercomputer (512 CPUs, Myrinet) in production
Although dwarfed by the GTC "First Light" event, the LaPalma
Supercomputer installed at CALP "opened for business" on July 16.
All the details have not been ironed out yet, so there might be some rough
edges during the first weeks, but basically it is now ready for use. After
the summer we will have a SIEminar to explain how to use the machine, what
software is available, etc., but if you don't want to wait and want to try
it over the summer, do get in touch with us. For those who have been using
the MareNostrum Supercomputer before, the transition should be seamless, as
LaPalma is just a reduced version of MareNostrum, with the same hardware and
software.
Conversion of old .imh+.pix iraf files (Solaris) to fits
As already announced, support to Sun Solaris will be soon discontinued, and
old Sun workstations will be replaced by newer Linux PCs. Note that, because
of the different
endianness of Sparc and
Intel processors, old
.imh+.pix IRAF files, or old STSDAS tables,
created in a Sun can't be read in a Linux PC. If you have such files,
perhaps in some almost forgotten tapes or disks, please consider using some
of the still available Sun machines to convert them to fits (according to
the info we found in the IRAF forum, no other conversion options are
available).
Software packages upgrades
Mathematica v6.0, STSDAS/TABLE3.7 and stsci_python 2.5 have been installed in the Linux network.
Mathematica v6.0 - According to the
Wolfram Mathematica 6 site,
this version "represents a dramatic breakthrough that immensely broadens Mathematica's
scope and applicability and redefines the very way we think about computation".
STSDAS/TABLES 3.7 contains changes to ACS, AXE, CALSTIS, CALWP2, MultiDrizzle,
PyDrizzle, SYNPHOT, and MSTOOLS as well as minor changes to CVOS and HSTIO (see
STSDAS
Release Notes for details). These changes are in sync with the latest release of
stsci_python, v2.5, which includes
PyRAF and
several updated python modules (see the
STScI_Python
Version 2.5 Release Notes for details). Please note that numarray support is being dropped in favor
of numpy, and users are encouraged to
migrate
to numpy. Old python and pyfits scripts relying on numarray can still be used by defining
the environment variable: setenv NUMERIX numarray.
As for
IDL, the
ITT IDL 6.4 page
says: "The most feature-loaded release since IDL 6.0, IDL 6.4 provides powerful, new core
visualization and analysis functionality, and new capabilities that allow data analysts and
developers to leverage IDL's power in multiple software environments."
Finally,
MIDAS 07FEBpl1.1
and the Intel Fortran Compilers
F90
and
C++
v10.0.25 have been installed.
Keep track of visits to your website using Statcounter
StatCounter is a very useful tool
to gather interesting statistics on how many visits your site is being receiving,
what specific pages, when and from where, what OS and browser, etc.; if you
wish, you can also add a hit counter to your home page. We are using it to track
visits to our SINFIN and SIEpedia sites, as well to the Research Area Intranet,
and we are quite satisfied with it. A couple of illustrative screenshots: the
first shows the
overall
statistics for the three sites, while the second is a detailed list of the
last
visits to the SIEpedia (which are virtually all from outside the IAC:
nemo
propheta in patria). All the details can be found in the StatCounter website,
or get in touch with us.
Do you feel overwhelmed by technology?
The development and implementation of new technologies inevitably create
difficulties in usage and adaptation, and we may well feel overwhelmed.
However, this is not something new to the third millennium; many basic items
and tools that nowadays seem to us as extremely easy and natural to use were
not quite so when they were first introduced. This
video, filmed sometime
in the day of the middle age, is a striking example.