Australian e-Astronomy US-Australia Workshop on High-Performance Grids and Applications 8-9 June 2004 David Barnes Research Fellow, School of Physics The University of Melbourne Aus-VO APAC Astronomy Grid Collaborations

Aus-VO Structure Rachel Webster (Melb) - Lead Investigator David Barnes (Melb) - Project Scientist –(sometimes Project Manager!) Funded year-by-year by the Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure - Equipment and Facilities grant program Institutes are broadly: –University astronomy research groups –National telescope facilities (AAO & ATNF) –University and partnership computing groups

Aus-VO Partner Institutes The University of Melbourne The University of Sydney CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility Anglo-Australian Observatory Swinburne University of Technology The University of Queensland Monash University The University of New South Wales Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing ANU Mount Stromlo Observatory & Supercomputing Facility CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing 2003 LIEF AUD 260K 2004 LIEF AUD 306K collaborators

APAC Astronomy Grid Structure Jon Smillie (ANU) – Project Leader + Sarah Maddison (Swin) & David Barnes (Melb) David Barnes (Melb) – Research Leader Steering Committee includes Aus-VO, Astronomy and Grav Wave representatives Funded by the APAC Grid Application Support grant program Active members & partners are: –Melbourne and Swinburne (via VPAC) –UNSW and Sydney (via ac3) –ANU (via ANU) Research Community is Aus-VO, astronomers (faculty, postdocs, students)

Thanks to … ARC for supporting Aus-VO through the LIEF grant scheme, year-by-year APAC and partners for supporting our grid activites through the application support program, 3 yrs together these allow forward planning and a nice division of grid infrastructure and science infrastructure effort … (This is not the last slide)

Aus-VO –science content data codes metadata registry content –science services source finding coordinate transformations catalogue matching visualisation interfaces to legacy environments APAC Astro Grid –data grids data store data access protocols authentication & authorisation network facilities –compute grids workflow job configuration, submission & monitoring code-to-data paradigms

APAC Astronomy Grid Project Our take on virtual observatories bring legacy astronomy archives on-line and ensure future project compliance provide access to archived realisations of simulations and to resources for computing against new parameter sets describe all data fully, and support a small and well-chosen set of interoperability protocols visualisedevelop tools and interfaces to find, acquire, process and visualise data build national and international grids to host the data, tools and interfaces

Aus-VO & APAC-AG projects 2004 Common format on-line archive projects: –HIPASS catalog: HI Parkes All Sky Survey: neutral Hydrogen spectral line survey, 4,300 sources with ~30 parameters and 1024-channel radio spectra –SUMSS catalog: Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey: radio continuum survey at 843 MHz, 107,000 sources with ~15 parameters –2dFGRS QSO catalog: 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey: optical spectra of >20,000 southern quasi-stellar objects –ATCA archive: Australia Telescope Compact Array archive: all observations since 1988, circa 1.5 TB of more than 1,000 separate observing projects! Substantial exercise in describing data with metadata. –MACHO, RAVE, Pulsar timing archives, Gemini archive and more in 2004! APAC Astronomy Grid Project

Aus-VO & APAC-AG projects 2004 Server- and client-based visualisation tools: –client canvas for legacy software package AIPS++ to draw upon from a remote server. –3d visualisation of catalogues Data reduction pipelines for: –Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope –AT Compact Array archive –Gemini, for Australian-used instruments Portals for theoretical astrophysics jobs: –configuration and execution –monitoring –result retrieval and initial analysis and display APAC Astronomy Grid Project

Themes and potential collaborations Data mining catalogue matching searches for new empirical relationships +/ new rare objects Legacy software integration using legacy code in VO services using VO services in legacy software environments transparent access to Web and Grid Services from the desktop Visualisation remote visualisation service (legacy s/w drawing to remote canvases via Corba, SOAP, …) VOTable to VRML service volume rendering

General future challenges & opportunities Data grid: replica catalogs done properly, bandwidth (esp. regional), certificate authority, virtual data grids?, … Services for uploading user codes: is a sandbox needed?, compiler and library versions, is a cluster needed? legacy softwareGrid management - synchronising Globus, Tomcat, … versions, legacy software, account names, geographical location, firewalls, … - use MDS? APAC Astronomy Grid Project

Grid a HUGE social challenge! dont want to turn astronomers into Grid programmers! dont want to depend (entirely) on external third-party services for day-to-day work! dont want to divert research staff! any demo efforts must be useful and long- lasting, not rushed to meet a deadline! dont want to make things harder!

Suggested Aust-US demo ePhysics portal [Aus-VO, APAC-AG] –prototyped at Melbourne, using GridSphere, collab. effort between Astro & Particle Px. grid broker(s) [GridBus, Nimrod/G, …] numerical codes [Aus-VO & APAC-AG, FLASH from NCSA?] compute grid nodes (computational) [APAC, …, 32 Tflop from NCSA?!, UCSD?] remote visualisation nodes and software [ship pixels] (simple plots, slicing, …) [QPSF?], could utilise 10Gbit Pacific link! data grid nodes (archiving, interim) […]