Astroinformatics is an interdisciplinary field of study involving the combination of

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

, data science,

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, informatics, and

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random ...

communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

technologies.Astroinformatics and digitization of astronomical heritage
, Nikolay Kirov. The fifth SEEDI International Conference Digitization of cultural and scientific heritage, May 19–20, 2010, Sarajevo. Retrieved 1 November 2012. The field is closely related to

astrostatistics Astrostatistics is a discipline which spans astrophysics, statistical analysis and data mining. It is used to process the vast amount of data produced by automated scanning of the cosmos, to characterize complex datasets, and to link astronomical d ...

Background

Astroinformatics is primarily focused on developing the tools, methods, and applications of computational science, data science,

, and statistics for research and education in data-oriented astronomy. Early efforts in this direction included data discovery,

metadata standards A metadata standard is a requirement which is intended to establish a common understanding of the meaning or semantics of the data, to ensure correct and proper use and interpretation of the data by its owners and users. To achieve this common unde ...

development, data modeling, astronomical

data dictionary A data dictionary, or metadata repository, as defined in the ''IBM Dictionary of Computing'', is a "centralized repository of information about data such as meaning, relationships to other data, origin, usage, and format". ''Oracle'' defines it ...

development,

data access Data access is a generic term referring to a process which has both an IT-specific meaning and other connotations involving access rights in a broader legal and/or political sense. In the former it typically refers to software and activities relat ...

, information retrieval,

data integration Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of them. This process becomes significant in a variety of situations, which include both commercial (such as when two similar companies ...

, and data mining in the astronomical Virtual Observatory initiatives. Further development of the field, along with astronomy community endorsement, was presented to the National Research Council (United States) in 2009 in the Astroinformatics "State of the Profession" Position Paper for the 2010

Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey is a review of astronomy and astrophysics literature produced approximately every ten years by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. The report surve ...

. That position paper provided the basis for the subsequent more detailed exposition of the field in the Informatics Journal paper ''Astroinformatics: Data-Oriented Astronomy Research and Education''. Astroinformatics as a distinct field of research was inspired by work in the fields of Bioinformatics and Geoinformatics, and through the eScience work of Jim Gray (computer scientist) at Microsoft Research, whose legacy was remembered and continued through the Jim Gray eScience Awards. Although the primary focus of Astroinformatics is on the large worldwide distributed collection of digital astronomical databases, image archives, and research tools, the field recognizes the importance of legacy data sets as well—using modern technologies to preserve and analyze historical astronomical observations. Some Astroinformatics practitioners help to Digital data, digitize historical and recent astronomical observations and images in a large database for efficient retrieval through World Wide Web, web-based interfaces. Another aim is to help develop new methods and software for astronomers, as well as to help facilitate the process and analysis of the rapidly growing amount of data in the field of astronomy. Astroinformatics is described as the "Fourth Paradigm" of astronomical research. There are many research areas involved with astroinformatics, such as data mining, machine learning, statistics, visualization, scientific data management, and semantic science. Data mining and

play significant roles in Astroinformatics as a Scientific method, scientific research discipline due to their focus on "knowledge discovery from data" (data mining, KDD) and "learning from data". The amount of data collected from astronomical sky surveys has grown from gigabytes to terabytes throughout the past decade and is predicted to grow in the next decade into hundreds of petabytes with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and into the exabytes with the Square Kilometre Array. This plethora of new data both enables and challenges effective astronomical research. Therefore, new approaches are required. In part due to this, data-driven science is becoming a recognized academic discipline. Consequently, astronomy (and other scientific disciplines) are developing information-intensive and data-intensive sub-disciplines to an extent that these sub-disciplines are now becoming (or have already become) standalone research disciplines and full-fledged academic programs. While many institutes of education do not boast an astroinformatics program, such programs most likely will be developed in the near future. Informatics has been recently defined as "the use of digital data, information, and related services for research and knowledge generation". However the usual, or commonly used definition is "informatics is the discipline of organizing, accessing, integrating, and mining data from multiple sources for discovery and decision support." Therefore, the discipline of astroinformatics includes many naturally-related specialties including data modeling, data organization, etc. It may also include transformation and normalization methods for data integration and information visualization, as well as knowledge extraction, indexing techniques, information retrieval and data mining methods. Classification schemes (e.g., taxonomy (general), taxonomies, ontology (information science), ontologies, folksonomy, folksonomies, and/or collaborative Tag (metadata), tagging) plus Astrostatistics will also be heavily involved. Citizen science projects (such as Galaxy Zoo) also contribute highly valued novelty discovery, feature meta-tagging, and object characterization within large astronomy data sets. All of these specialties enable scientific discovery across varied massive data collections, collaborative research, and data re-use, in both research and learning environments. In 2012, two position papers were presented to the Council of the American Astronomical Society that led to the establishment of formal working groups in Astroinformatics and Astrostatistics for the profession of

within the US and elsewhere. Astroinformatics provides a natural context for the integration of education and research. The experience of research can now be implemented within the classroom to establish and grow data literacy through the easy re-use of data. It also has many other uses, such as repurposing archival data for new projects, literature-data links, intelligent retrieval of information, and many others.

Conferences

Additional conferences and conference lists:

References

External links

International AstroInformatics Association
(IAIA)
Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems
(ADASS)
Astrostatistics and Astroinformatics Portal

Cosmostatistics Initiative
(COIN)
Astroinformatics and Astrostatistics Commission of the International Astronomical Union
{{Portal bar, Technology, Astronomy, Stars, Science, Electronics, Mathematics Astronomy Astrophysics Big data Computational astronomy Data management Information science by discipline Applied statistics Computational fields of study

Background

Conferences

See also

References

External links