Re: Astronomy meets Semantic Web/Linked Data?

Just a general message to say thank you for all the pointers on/off 
list. The general consensus seems to be that there are certainly 
opportunities for applying SW/LD techniques to Astronomy, and there are 
a variety of people in the community with backgrounds and interests in 
both areas, and indeed a number of people are active in this 
intersection (though more in the sense of isolated projects).

Ismael and I will explore this intersection further towards defining a 
possible masters topic applying some SW/LD techniques in a manner that 
has a real value proposition in the area. I understand though that from 
Kjetil's experience, this may be trickier than it first appears. :)

Best and thanks,
Aidan

On 31-03-2016 1:59, Aidan Hogan wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> [Apologies for cross-posting but I'm not sure which list fits best.]
>
> Ismael (cc'ed) is thinking about a possible masters topic in the
> intersection of his twin passions of Astronomy and Semantic Web/Linked
> Data.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> (The only thing I'm currently aware of is the presence of some
> descriptions in knowledge-bases like DBpedia and Wikidata of well-known
> galaxies and other general-interest resources.)
>
> We would be very grateful for any pointers along those lines.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Aidan, Ismael
>