Exeter scientist helps shape future of astronomy

The meeting will be a melting pot for researchers at the cutting edge of technology, outreach professionals working in new media, and citizen scientists.

With over 50 astronomers, software engineers and media professionals expected from all over the world, the conference will focus on new concepts of thinking and working in astronomy today. Participants will explore new ways of exploiting the data deluge that will be produced by upcoming surveys and instruments for the benefit of their science and of society as a whole. New ways of communicating science to a wide audience have burst onto the scene in recent years: Web 2.0, blogs, podcasts and social networking. The event will look at what role this new media could play in the future.

Dr Alasdair Allan of the University of Exeter's School of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, said: “We are in the middle of a revolution in astronomy with the virtual observatory finally beginning to bear its first fruit. The arrival of Google Sky and Microsoft WorldWide Telescope fundamentally changed how the growing collections of data have been presented. Data mining, robotic telescopes and virtual observatories will soon take petabytes of data to a global audience of professionals and amateurs. Communication and networking technologies are changing science, for both researchers and the public alike.

“No science is better suited to engaging the general public in real scientific research and discovery than astronomy. Astronomers have a long history of the general public looking over our shoulders as we work. So one thing that shouldn’t surprise us is user generated content.”

Examples of this are the hugely popular Galaxy Zoo project, or the increasing number of robotic telescopes made available to citizen scientists for scientific and educational purposes. Online communication and network-based technologies are changing the face of science, for professional astronomers as well as for the general public.

Sessions will focus on citizen science projects, new media for outreach and communication, network-based research tools and data visualisation. The event includes an ‘Astronomy Hack Day’, when topics will be explored in a hands-on way and delegates will brainstorm new ideas and applications. The delegates will be working with both web based software, software for mobile platforms such as the Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones, as well open hardware projects based on the Arduino microprocessor board.

One of the objectives of the meeting is to come up with a new citizen science projects, in which everyone will be invited to be directly involved in producing new scientific results.

The morning talks of the .Astronomy workshop will be streamed online on the meeting’s website.

This year’s meeting is the second in the series and is being held in the Lorentz Center, the International Center for workshops in the Sciences, in Leiden. The first .Astronomy workshop took place in Cardiff last year.

Dr Alasdair Allan is a member of the Astrophysics Group.