The Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory by Darren Croton.
If you guessed from the title that the acronym would be “TAO,” take a point for your house.
This post is not going to be about CANDELS directly, but about work that, in the long run, could play an enormous part in helping CANDELS astronomers analyse and interpret their data.
At Swinburne University in Australia, myself and my group are developing a new tool, called the Theory Astrophysical Observatory (TAO), which will make access to cutting edge supercomputer simulations of galaxy formation almost trivial. TAO will put the latest theory data in to the “cloud” for use by the international astronomy community, plus add a number of science enhancing eResearch tools. It is part of a larger project funded by the Australian Government called the All Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO).
TAO boasts a clean and intuitive web interface. It avoids the need to know a database query language (like SQL) by providing a custom point-and-click web-form to select virtual galaxies and their properties, which auto-generates the query code in the background. Query results can then be funneled through additional “modules” and sent to a local supercomputer for further processing and manipulation….
You may not have a local supercomputer today, but in a year or two? Maybe as accessible as FaceBook is today. Hopefully more useful. 😉
Are you still designing for desk/laptop processing capabilities?