Cosmolab Dissemination Activities

1
Cosmolab Dissemination Activities

• Hans R. de Ruiter (on behalf of Cosmo.Lab)
• Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna
• Istituto di Radioastronomia del CNR

2
Cosmo.Lab - who should know about it?

• Cosmo.Lab has been adapted and developed in the
  past two years keeping in mind that it should
  become a user-friendly, flexible and many-purpose
  tool for the 3D analysis of astronomical data
  (observational as well as from numerical
  simulations). Potential users are
• Scientists analysis of huge amounts of data to
  be displayed in an easy-to-use way - this refers
  to data quality checking (NFRA), simulation data
  (Catania, Cineca), observational data (Milan,
  Bologna)
• General Public (Planetarium) e.g.
  Exhibitions, Visitor Centre (IRA)
• Schools - Cosmo.Lab as a tool for teachers as
  well as students themselves

3
List of Events

• WSCG 2003, Plzen, Czech Republic (Amati, Melotti,
  Ferro, DiRico, Paioro)
• IST 2002, Copenhagen, Denmark (IRA poster, CINECA
  poster)
• Eurographics (Milan), July 11-12 2002 (Amati,
  Nanni, Tinarelli)
• 4th Joint Eurographics-IEEE TCVG Symposium on
  visualization, 2002 (Gheller, Buonomo, Calori,
  Becciani)
• CCP 2001, Aachen, Germany (Buonomo, Gheller,
  Becciani, Antonucci-Delogu)
• ADASS X Conference Proceedings for Tree-Nbody
  simulations, October 2002, Baltimore, USA
  (Becciani, Antonucci-Delogu, Buonomo, Gheller)
  Strassbourg, October 2003 (NFRA poster)
• Futurshow, Bologna April 2002
• IAU General Assembly, Sydney 2003

4
List of Events (contd)

• First Computational Astrophysical Workshop, July
  4-5, 2002, Bologna (Becciani et al.)
• Sixth SIMAI congress, May 27-31, Laguna Chia
  (Sardegna), session for experts (Becciani et al.)
• Introduction of Cosmo.Lab to teachers and
  students of the Liceo Scientifico Enrico Fermi,
  Bologna (IRA)
• Third International Conference on Computational
  Science, June 2003, St. Petersburg, Russia
  (poster)
• Internal Meetings
• Kick-off meeting september 2001
• Meeting January 16, 2002
• User meeting, June 3, 2002
• Cosmo.Lab meeting January 2003
• User meeting, November 7, 2003

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The IAU General Assembly, Sydney 16-27 July 2003

• Posters were presented for two events at the
  General Assembly
• Joint Discussion 8 Large Telescopes and the
  Virtual Observatory visions of the future
• Special Session 4 Effective Teaching and
  Learning of Astronomy

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Virtual Observatories(Joint Discussion 8)
Problem there are enormous interests at stake in
terms of funding on national and international
level. Everywhere the Virtual Observatory is
being recognized as a fundamental development for
the future (accessing practically all
observational and theoretical astronomical data
many different formats, types, places, ) with
standardized tools for selection, extraction and
analysis. Result in many countries Virtual
Observatories are being developed independently
(Canadian VO, Japan VO, ). Although there are
attempts to create universal VO (AVO, IVO,..) we
are still a long way off from one VO supported by
the entire community. Cosmo.Lab is just a pawn
(and perhaps not even that) in this game.
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Astronomical Education

• Astronomy is taught at school in various
  countries, either directly or as part of science
  courses.
• There exist astronomy programmes for PCs, some
  of them very beautiful, but often rather limited
  in scope and very rigid the data and their
  visualization are fixed.
• This means that their usefulness as a teaching
  tool is very often doubtful, apart from the
  esthetical satisfaction tey give.
• Cosmo.Lab offers the possibility to include
  recent data in a simple way (an absolute
  condition is the existence of an easy-to-read
  user manual) and to choose what you want to do.

8
The IRA Visitor Center
Next year will see the completion of the IRA
Visitor Centre, near the radio telescopes at
Medicina (Bologna)
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The IRA Visitor Center (contd)

• Introduction to the radio telescopes, but also
  to astronomy in general.
• Cosmo.Lab will be installed on some PCs with the
  capability of stereographic viewing.
• The Visitor Center is in an advanced stage of
  completion, sponsor are being searched (and
  found!)

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The IRA Visitor Center (contd)
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The IRA Visitor Center (contd)
12
Prospects for future use of Cosmo.Lab

• In Science through the Dutch leg (NFRA)
  CosmoLab will become a tool for analysis of
  (radio) astronomical data both in the stage of
  quality control as well as in the interpretation
  phase. Its use in large international enterprises
  like the Virtual Observatories is at present very
  uncertain.
• General Public the introduction of Cosmo.Lab at
  the IRA-VC is only the first step, to be followed
  by other instutions like planetaria, science
  museums etc.
• Schools IRA will, through its existing contact
  with schools in the Bologna region, interact with
  teachers in order to take into account specific
  requests.