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
