An ADS to KML mashup Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

The idea of ADS to KML came up over morning coffee on the last day of the .astronomy meeting, and by the close of the conference I had most of it hacked together...

Publications for Allan, A. as KML

What am I talking about? A lot of papers on ADS now have links to the SIMBAD database for further information on the objects they discuss. For instance I was recently a co-author on an exo-planet paper which links to the relevant objects in SIMBAD...

The mashup at that point was obvious. Do an ADS query and look for all the papers with links into SIMBAD, then do a series of follow-up queries on SIMBAD and grab all of the objects mentioned in the papers. Then generate a KML file of your publication history, which you can either display directly in Google Sky, or embed into a Google Maps for Sky as I've done above.

Of course not all papers reference objects, and not all papers with objects have SIMBAD links, especially older papers. None the less, having run my script to generate a KML file for several colleagues now it actually gives a fairly good representation of their research interests.

You can grab the perl source code and have a play around with it yourself, you'll need my Astro::ADS module which you can grab from CPAN.

You could imagine several ways to extend my quick hack. If you had a large enough group of astronomers, and therefore a large enough number of papers, you could produce heat maps of the sky instead of using simple push pins. You could cross-correlate your own publications with that of a group or institute where you're thinking of applying for a job, or the publication output of a survey team with the footprint of their survey...

Comments welcome, but yes, I already know it's an interesting but essentially pointless hack. I mean other comments...

KML as a standard? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Google has given up control of the newborn they acquired when they bought Keyhole back in 2004. The Open Geospatial Consortium has just officially accepted KML as a standard.

The upcoming IVOA interop meeting in Trieste next month will also have a KML session, where we're going to discuss KML from the astronomy and VO side. I'd like to think that this is the start of the push to adopt KML as an 'official' standard inside the IVOA. Maybe we can sue for partial custody and it can visit us every second weekend and on major holidays?

Google Sky Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

We knew it was coming for a a couple of years now, and here it is at last. The latest version of Google Earth has the first release of Google Sky embedded inside it. Even if it is quite hard to find...


Google Sky is part of Google Earth v4.2 beta
More from me when I get my head around what it's going to mean for the professional community, but I can see changes coming. I think my VOEvent time line representations might just suddenly have become very old hat. At the very least I think I'd better start generating KML links from inside eSTAR.

Update: I've spent the afternoon poking around with the internals of the VOEvent broker and the KML documentation and I currently have a live network link (KML) connected to the broker. This means that any OGLE, Robonet-1.0, ESSENCE, SDSS, GCN or other event messages that flow across the backbone will be automatically published to Google Sky.

Right now the descriptions and other details attached to the placemarks are fairly basic, but I'll work on this again tomorrow and hopefully make some progress. The other things to take note of here is that this is a live feed, that means there won't be that much to see yet since I haven't pre-populated the network link with content. You'll see it in real time as it flows across the network...

Update: The Caltech guys have had a little bit of a head start since I'm told that Google Sky uses Caltech DPOSS images. This is what they had lined up and ready to roll for the launch,

Today Google has released a new Sky layer for Google Earth. In conjunction, the VOEventNet project is pleased to announce a set of mashups showing recent astronomical transients, updated every 15 minutes. The mashups show GCN feeds (SWIFT, Milagro, Integral), the GRBlog (contains sky-located GCN circulars), as well as OGLE microlensing events. The event feeds contain VOEvents, and drilldown is available to finding charts, light curves, and original VOEvents. - Roy Williams, Caltech

As you can tell from the boilerplate in the credits in their mashups, my own eSTAR project in Exeter is part of the VOEventNet project. In fact we provide the OGLE event feed data they're using in their as OGLE network link. Of course since Google Sky was covered by non-disclosure agreements today is the first I'd heard about things. Oh well...

Update: While those of us on the inside haven't quite grasped exactly what Google Sky means yet, most of us have figured out that the world has changed. There has been a large number of emails flying back and forth on mailing lists today, and I think a few people are going to be surprised by the next few months. But unlike the professional GIS community, who were really surprised by the traction that Google Earth managed to gain amongst professionals and non-professionals alike, astronomers have a long history of the general public looking over our shoulders as we work. So one thing that isn't going to surprise us is user generated content.

Of course we're in the middle of revolution in astronomy with the virtual observatory finally beginning to bear its first fruit. The arrival of Google Sky isn't really a coincidence, but it is well timed. The mashup I put together this afternoon was really only possible because of that timing, two or three years ago the data wouldn't have been accessible in the same way as it is today.

Update: I'm really puzzled by why people are talking about Google Sky as if it was planetarium software. I think they're missing the point, I don't think the guys at Google ever intended it to be planetarium software. Google Sky isn't about whether you can observe the Ring Nebula from where ever you happen to be standing at the time. It's all about publishing, indexing, and sharing information. Surely that was obvious? It's about collaboration and user driven content, surely?

Update: Another quick hack from me to PLASTIC-enable Google Sky.