Astronomical Society Research Articles

Astrolabe: Curating, Linking, and Computing Astronomy’s Dark Data

Abstract Where appropriate repositories are not available to support all relevant astronomical data products, data can fall into darkness: unseen and unavailable for future reference and reuse. Some data in this category are legacy or old data, but newer data sets are also often uncurated and could remain dark. This paper provides a description of the design motivation and development of Astrolabe, a cyberinfrastructure project that addresses a set of community recommendations for locating and ensuring the long-term curation of dark or otherwise at-risk data and integrated computing. This paper also describes the outcomes of the series of community workshops that informed creation of Astrolabe. According to participants in these workshops, much astronomical dark data currently exist that are not curated elsewhere, as well as software that can only be executed by a few individuals and therefore becomes unusable because of changes in computing platforms. Astronomical research questions and challenges would be better addressed with integrated data and computational resources that fall outside the scope of existing observatory and space mission projects. As a solution, the design of the Astrolabe system is aimed at developing new resources for management of astronomical data. The project is based in CyVerse cyberinfrastructure technology and is a collaboration between the University of Arizona and the American Astronomical Society. Overall, the project aims to support open access to research data by leveraging existing cyberinfrastructure resources and promoting scientific discovery by making potentially useful data available to the astronomical community, in a computable format.

Rodney Deane Davies CBE. 8 January 1930—8 November 2015

Following early life on a farm in South Australia and a degree in Physics at the University of Adelaide, Rod Davies began his research career at the Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney in 1951, working on the development of radio interferometers for solar observations. In 1953, he moved to the University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank, working with Bernard Lovell, later becoming the Director of Jodrell Bank from 1988 to 1997 and the President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1987 to 1989. He is best known for leading observations of the structure of the cosmic microwave background, first carried out at Jodrell Bank and then transferred to Tenerife during the 1980s and 90s. Later, he was instrumental in establishing the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft mission and continued after retirement to be closely involved in the interpretation of the data from Planck . He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1992 and awarded a CBE in 1995. During Rod's tenure as Director of Jodrell Bank, he was responsible for the start of a major project to upgrade the Lovell Telescope, recognizing that with increased capability it could play a leading role into the 21st century. He was also Director during a major upgrade to the MERLIN telescope array, completed around 1991, and making MERLIN a modern, useable, open-access instrument. It was transformed into a true national facility, funded by government, and widely used by the national and international radio astronomy community. Rod Davies was always a kind and generous colleague, and a great inspiration to several generations of radio astronomers.

Ousted from ESO, Brazilian astronomy will be ‘strangled,’ says president of the Brazilian Astronomical Society

Ousted from ESO, Brazilian astronomy will be ‘strangled,’ says president of the Brazilian Astronomical Society

An Improved Quantification of HD 147379 b

© 2018 The American Astronomical Society. This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available online at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/aaac32.

AASTeX and the challenges of publishing in an increasingly interactive environment

In 2016 the American Astronomical Society (AAS) released two new versions of its LaTeX classfile, AASTeX. These were the first changes in over 11 years and included many new features to enhance an author’s ability to present their science in a format conducive to publishing in the AAS environment. While LaTeX is an excellent way to convey the written word, it lacks robust support for many desirable features including collaborative editing, large table support and figure interactivity. Bridging the gap between the old methods of writing and reviewing a printed manuscript and the new features the AAS has available and is working on implementing in a published HTML article is an ongoing challenge. This talk will highlight the new features of AASTeX and discuss how AAS publishing will move forward.

The Astrolabe Project: Identifying and Curating Astronomical ‘Dark Data’ through Development of Cyberinfrastructure Resources

As research datasets and analyses grow in complexity, data that could be valuable to other researchers and to support the integrity of published work remain uncurated across disciplines. These data are especially concentrated in the “Long Tail” of funded research, where curation resources and related expertise are often inaccessible. In the domain of astronomy, it is undisputed that uncurated "dark data" exist, but the scope of the problem remains uncertain. The “Astrolabe” Project is a collaboration between University of Arizona researchers, the CyVerse cyberinfrastructure environment, and the American Astronomical Society, with a mission to identify and ingest previously-uncurated astronomical data, and to provide a robust computational environment for analysis and sharing of data, as well as services for authors wishing to deposit data associated with publications. Following expert feedback obtained through two workshops held in 2015 and 2016, Astrolabe is funded in part by National Science Foundation. The system is being actively developed within CyVerse, and Astrolabe collaborators are soliciting heterogeneous datasets and potential users for the prototype system. Astrolabe team members are currently working to characterize the properties of uncurated astronomical data, and to develop automated methods for locating potentially-useful data to be targeted for ingest into Astrolabe, while cultivating a user community for the new data management system.

New audiences for old books: Using astronomy archives in school outreach activities

The Royal Astronomical Society promotes the study of astronomy and geophysics and has recently committed to increasing public engagement with new audiences. The librarian, Sian Prosser has worked with the outreach, education and diversity officer, Sheila Kanani, to put the scientific archives of the Society at the heart of a primary school workshop telling the story of Caroline Herschel.

Scientific Society Journals: the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia

In the 1950s and 1960s the increased specialization of science led to the formation of discipline-based scientific societies. Some of these, among them the Astronomical Society of Australia, began their own refereed journals. The Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, which has now been continuously published by the Society for over 50 years, has undergone many changes in that time in response to the changes in the publication landscape. The method of production has advanced from manual to computer typesetting and from printed volumes to purely electronic publishing. The content of the journal has changed from short conference papers to formal research papers that now, under the impact of citation indices, face strict refereeing and are mixed with major invited review papers. Dedicated editors have maintained the journal despite a preference from many members to publish in better known overseas journals as well as strong opposition from within the society to the costs involved in maintaining a research journal.

Armenian Astronomy: Recent Activities

An overview of the current activities of the Armenian astronomy, including professional research, University and school education, public outreach and other organizational affairs. We show that present day Armenian astronomy serves as a leader for the regional activities, as well as is among the most advanced and active sciences in Armenia. Moreover, recent achievements during the years 2000-2018 are such that many years efforts since Viktor Ambartsumian’s times were necessary and finally received recognition in various fields. BAO was recognized as National Value, regional astronomical centre, and Markarian Survey was included in UNESCO Memory of the World documentary heritage list. We succeeded to organize a number of important meetings (IAU symposia and colloquium, JENAM, etc.) and establish a series of Byurakan International Summer Schools. We also present the Armenian Astronomical Society’s (ArAS) and IAU South West and Central Asian regional centre’s activities.

Erratum: A family of lowered isothermal models

This is a correction to: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 454, Issue 1, 21 November 2015, Pages 576–592, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1848

Commemorative coins issued in 2017

Abstract The Czech National Bank issued nine commemorative coins in 2017. They included six silver CZK 200 coins issued to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Maria Theresa, 75th anniversary of operation called Anthropoid, 100th anniversary of the birth of Josef Kainar, 100th anniversary of the foundation of the “Sdružení českých umělců grafiků Hollar”, the 650th anniversary of the chapel of Saint Wenceslas in the Saint Vitus Cathedral and 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Czech Astronomical Society. In addition, one silver CZK 500 coin was issued to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle of Zborov. The second two commemorative CZK 5,000 gold coins from the Castles cycle – dedicated to Bouzov and Pernštejn castles – were also issued.

Reservoir creep and induced seismicity: inferences from geomechanical modeling of gas depletion in the Groningen field

The Groningen gas field in the Netherlands experienced an immediate reduction in seismic events in the year following a massive cut in production. This reduction is inconsistent with existingmodels of seismicity predictions adopting compaction strains as proxy, since reservoir creep would then result in a more gradual reduction of seismic events after a production stop. We argue that the discontinuity in seismic response relates to a physical discontinuity in stress loading rate on faults upon the arrest of pressure change. The stresses originate from a combination of the direct poroelastic effect through the pressure changes and the delayed effect of ongoing compaction after cessation of reservoir production. Both mechanisms need to be taken into account. To this end, we employed finite-element models in a workflow that couples Kelvin-Chain reservoir creep with a semi-analytical approach for the solution of slip and seismic moment from the predicted stress change. For ratios of final creep and elastic compaction up to 5, the model predicts that the cumulative seismic moment evolution after a production stop is subject to a very moderate increase, 2-10 times less than the values predicted by the alternative approaches using reservoir compaction strain as proxy. This is in agreement with the low seismicity in the central area of the Groningen field immediately after reduction in production. The geomechanical model findings support scope for mitigating induced seismicity through adjusting rates of pressure change by cutting down production. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society.

A Further Survey of Multiple Authorship in the Astronomical Literature

Authorship trends within the astronomical community have been studied using data drawn from the publication records of 12 refereed journals. The period covered by the study is 1991–2015. Across all journals, the annual fraction of papers with one or two authors has decreased with time, typically accompanied by an increased propensity for papers to have six or more co-authors. There is considerable variability in the behavior of three-to-five author papers. Reports on instrumentation developments within Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP), a journal that places specific emphasis on publishing instrumentation papers, have a higher number of authors than average. The trends away from one-to-two author papers and toward papers with six or more authors show no correlation with either the annual number of papers per journal or the geographical diversity of the contributing author pools.

The Most Productive Years of Average Astronomers

We learned previously that geniuses and outstanding scientists have peak productivities in their 30s but produce little late in life. This time we consider average astronomers who have completed their careers (25 American Astronomical Society members who died recently) and found that they peak in their mid 40s and did half of their life's important output after age 50.

Mapping of Scholarly Communication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, and Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific: A Bibliometric Approach

ABSTRACTIn this study, three journals in the field of astronomy and astrophysics were selected for mapping scholarly communication by using bibliometric methods. Moreover, a brief review of bibliometric studies in the field of astronomy and astrophysics was conducted. The annual publication distribution and authorship pattern of articles in the three journals were analyzed. All three journals published more multiauthored papers. Author productivity indexes, such as the average number of authors per paper and productivity per author were calculated. Lotka’s law of scientific productivity and goodness-of-fit tests were applied; the results revealed that the data set in this study did not conform to Lotka’s law. The h-, g-, and i10-indexes for each journal were calculated. Regarding the geospatial distribution of articles, the authors from the journals’ source country contributed more articles. In this paper, highly contributing institutions and authors are presented. A list of highly cited articles and journals is also presented. The author-given keywords were analyzed.

The Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey: Overview and survey design

AbstractHyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a wide-field imaging camera on the prime focus of the 8.2-m Subaru telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. A team of scientists from Japan, Taiwan, and Princeton University is using HSC to carry out a 300-night multi-band imaging survey of the high-latitude sky. The survey includes three layers: the Wide layer will cover 1400 deg2 in five broad bands (grizy), with a 5 σ point-source depth of r ≈ 26. The Deep layer covers a total of 26 deg2 in four fields, going roughly a magnitude fainter, while the UltraDeep layer goes almost a magnitude fainter still in two pointings of HSC (a total of 3.5 deg2). Here we describe the instrument, the science goals of the survey, and the survey strategy and data processing. This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, which includes a large number of technical and scientific papers describing results from the early phases of this survey.

European Astronomical Society prizes 2017

The European Astronomical Society awarded its most prestigious prizes during the annual European Week of Astronomy and Space Science, held in Prague from 26–30 June 2017.

Tails and bridges in the parabolic restricted three-body problem

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2017 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Commentary: The eclipse of a generation

Commentary: The eclipse of a generation

Extreme Radio Flares and Associated X-Ray Variability from Young Stellar Objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster

Abstract Young stellar objects are known to exhibit strong radio variability on timescales of weeks to months, and a few reports have documented extreme radio flares with at least an order of magnitude change in flux density on timescales of hours to days. However, there have been few constraints on the occurrence rate of such radio flares or on the correlation with pre-main sequence X-ray flares, although such correlations are known for the Sun and nearby active stars. Here we report simultaneous deep VLA radio and Chandra X-ray observations of the Orion Nebula Cluster, targeting hundreds of sources to look for the occurrence rate of extreme radio variability and potential correlation with the most extreme X-ray variability. We identify 13 radio sources with extreme radio variability, with some showing an order of magnitude change in flux density in less than 30 minutes. All of these sources show X-ray emission and variability, but we find clear correlations with extreme radio flaring only on timescales <1 hr. Strong X-ray variability does not predict the extreme radio sources and vice versa. Radio flares thus provide us with a new perspective on high-energy processes in YSOs and the irradiation of their protoplanetary disks. Finally, our results highlight implications for interferometric imaging of sources violating the constant-sky assumption.