Re: Astronomy meets Semantic Web/Linked Data?

On Thursday 31. March 2016 01.59.50 Aidan Hogan wrote:
> Ismael (cc'ed) is thinking about a possible masters topic in the
> intersection of his twin passions of Astronomy and Semantic Web/Linked
> Data.

I share these passions, in fact, I did my master's in cosmology back in 
2002, and now about to finalize my ph.d. on semweb. 

> It seems our cousins in Astronomy have lots of problems coping with
> large amounts of diverse data, and we have the typical integration
> problems across different observatories, as well as questions of how to
> make data public in a reusable manner, and so forth. So trying to apply
> SW/LD methodologies to the area of Astronomy would seem to make a lot of
> sense.

Yes, indeed it does. There are many problems, for example multi-wavelength 
studies, transient objects, large surveys, classifications, automated 
hypothesis generation, where Semantic Web technologies make an awful lot 
of sense. 
 
> However, in Googling around, I could find very little if any work in
> this intersection, which I find a little puzzling. Hence I'm just
> looking for pointers to any works or groups or people or tools or
> resources or papers, etc., in the intersection of astronomy and SW/LD.
> It could be related to the use of RDF, ontologies, SPARQL, Linked Data,
> etc., for astronomical data.

There was a growing community some years ago, and some very nice workshops 
were organized, at Caltech in 2008 and Glasgow in 2009.

There was a bunch of us coming together at some point working on a EU 
proposal do some serious work on this, but it only almost made it. :-)

In Europe, Norman Gray has been the main champion of Semantic Astronomy.

However, it seems we have failed to impress astronomers. Astronomers tend 
to work on pretty heavy things, and many are themselves capable 
programmers, but many are also skeptical about the hypes of the industry. 
Semantic Web has been difficult to sell as more than just another bandwagon, 
I suppose. They are keen to use academic software, but it has to be rather 
mature, or developed by astronomers :-) 

I think that we would need to stabilize and mature our systems, package 
them so that it doesn't take a day just to install stuff, and show some 
real practical benefits in their field.

I would certainly be interested in doing a post-doc on this topic, should 
the opportunity arise, but it seems it is a hard sell.

Best,

Kjetil

Received on Sunday, 3 April 2016 22:38:43 UTC