John Hopkins University | Via EurekAlert | 26 Aug 2010
Astronomy website awarded prestigious prize by ScienceA website that brings the universe into the homes and onto the computer screens of professional and amateur astronomers alike has won a Science Prize for Online Resources in Education, known as SPORE, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Built by a Johns Hopkins University team led by astrophysicist and computer scientist Alexander Szalay, the SkyServer search tool of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's database makes more than 350 million stars and galaxies available to students, teachers and the public. SkyServer's Mapquest-like interface allows them to pan through the sky, zoom in and out, and click on stars and galaxies for more information.
"The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has made its entire dataset available through this online portal for public use in education," said Szalay, the Alumni Centennial Professor in the Krieger School's Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy. "This is a unique opportunity for students, teachers and the public to learn about astronomy. Basically, anyone with Internet access can now interact with the data in the same way that professional scientists do."
The most ambitious astronomical survey ever taken, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey -- which began in 1991 and involved hundreds of scientists around the world -- is sometimes described as astronomy's equivalent of the Human Genome Project. When complete, it will provide detailed optical images covering more than a quarter of the sky, as well as a three-dimensional map of millions of galaxies and quasars. The development of SkyServer, in particular, benefited greatly from Szalay's collaboration with Jim Gray of Microsoft Research, who worked with the Johns Hopkins team on that and several other large-scale, high-performance scientific databases.
The SDSS website gives browsers access to a three-dimensional map of the entire universe, including the brightest 1 million stars and quasars. This data is fed into the website by a dedicated 2.5 meter diameter SDSS telescope that uses a 120 megapixel camera in New Mexico to image the entire night sky, 1.5 square degrees of sky at a time (about eight times the area of the full moon). The goal of the survey is to address fundamental questions about the universe by looking at large-scale patterns of the galaxies. Astrophysicists have many theories about how the universe came into being and evolved, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is aimed at telling scientists which theories are correct, or whether they must come up with completely new ones.
Using the SkyServer search tool, users can visually explore the heavens and sort through the reams of data available on the SDSS site, Szalay said.
"SkyServer users can pan through the sky, zoom in and out, and click on stars and galaxies for more information, such as the galaxy's brightness or its position in the sky," Szalay said. "There also are tools that let any user examine SDSS data on any object. It's truly amazing."
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | via EurekAlert | 26 Aug 2010
The Universe Online - MJ Raddick, AS SzalayEnormous, interactive database provides students and teachers with a dynamic map of the universe
Growing up in Hungary, Alex Szalay was considered seriously cool. Often a winner of math and science competitions, the young Szalay got to travel to Budapest on a regular basis and to sit in on lectures given by future Nobel Prize-winners. He and his peers considered his early inclusion in the scientific community a great opportunity and an honor.
As one of the creators of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) SkyServer database, Szalay is providing students and astronomy enthusiasts with that same kind of excitement, the thrill of "getting engaged in real research, problem-solving, and discovery." The massive database and associated Web site portal allows users to visually explore and research almost the entire visible night sky without having to wait for access to a giant telescope.
Because of its enormous contribution to astronomy education, the SDSS SkyServer has been selected to receive the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) award.
Science 329 5995 (27 Aug 2010) DOI: 10.1126/science.1186936
Essays on Science and Society | SPORE Series Winner
Modern science is advancing at an unprecedented rate, and the amount of scientific data is doubling every year. These data have sparked a revolution in the way astronomy is practiced. No longer are scientists forced to wait months for access to a telescope to learn about the night sky; instead, entire research projects can be accomplished with online data sources. Representing modern astronomy, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has made its entire data set available through an online portal for public use as an educational resource and to invite volunteer contributions to scientific research.
The SDSS has worked since 1991 to create a map of the universe and is the astronomy equivalent of the Human Genome Project. The dedicated 2.5-m-diameter telescope in New Mexico used a 120-megapixel camera to image more than one-quarter of the entire night sky, 1.5 square degrees of sky at a time, about eight times the area of the full Moon, both inside and outside of the Milky Way, and has created a three-dimensional (3D) map of the brightest one million galaxies and quasars. A pair of spectrographs fed by optical fibers measured spectra of, and hence distances to, more than 600 galaxies and quasars in a single observation. A custom-designed set of software pipelines kept pace with the enormous data flow from the telescope.
