Next: Virtual Observatory Technologies
Previous: Table of Contents
Table of Contents - Subject Index - Author Index - Search

Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XII
ASP Conference Series, Vol. 295, 2003
Editors: H. E. Payne, R. I. Jedrzejewski, and R. N. Hook

Preface

This volume contains papers presented at the twelfth annual conference for Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS XII). It was held October 13-16, 2002 at the Marriott Waterfront Hotel on Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and hosted by the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Conference Overview

The meeting took place under fine autumn weather. The meeting location was actually nestled between the Inner Harbor (National Aquarium, many places to eat, several pubs, and a large chain book store) and Little Italy (more places to eat, including the banquet location, one of our favorite pubs, and Baltimore's most famous spot for coffee and dessert). The hotel itself sported a number of inviting locations, provided a lot of great food (the opening reception being especially memorable), and unobtrusively kept things running smoothly.

ADASS XII was attended by 291 registered participants, including 85 people representing 16 countries outside the United States and Canada. The program included 12 invited speakers and 25 contributed oral presentations. In addition, there were 95 poster presentations, 11 computer demonstrations, and 6 Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions. This volume consists of 109 contributions: 27 papers presented orally (including 8 of the invited papers), 75 poster papers, 5 demonstration summaries, and 2 BoF summaries.

Oral presentations were solicited by the Program Organizing Committee (POC) around ``Key Topics,'' reflected in session titles. We are past the point of discussing ``Virtual Observatories'' (VO) as a concept, and got down to business with sessions on VO ``Technologies'' and ``Interoperability.'' A VO orientation was also present in many other presentations, as well as demonstrations and posters. ``Next-Generation Telescopes and Control Systems'' was an interesting new area, while other key topics were familiar from recent conferences: ``Sky Surveys,'' ``Enabling Technologies,'' ``Calibration,'' and ``Data Management.'' The science topic was given a slight spin to emerge as ``Optimizing Science.''

The BoF sessions took place on Monday afternoon and evening. The topics and organizers were: FITS (Don Wells, NRAO), Reuseable Software Components (Frank Tanner, STScI), Education and Public Outreach (Steve McDonald, UMASS Boston and Silicon Spaceships), Python in Astronomy (Perry Greenfield, STScI), Astronomical Websites (Tony Ferro), and Teaching Scientific Computing with N-body Simulations (Vicki Johnson, Interconnect; Peter Teuben, UMd). The BoF sessions are a volunteer effort by the organizers, and we thank them.

Sunday's program was devoted to a very well attended tutorial on XML and Web Services for Astronomers, presented by Roy Williams and Robert Brunner. XML is now a mainstream topic, but the emergence of Web services was supported by a number of poster presentations, as well.

The People Behind the Conference

The ADASS Program Organizing Committee was Todd Boroson (NOAO), Dick Crutcher (UIUC/NCSA), Daniel Durand (CADC), Daniel Egret (CDS), Brian Glendenning (NRAO), Tom Handley (IPAC/Caltech/JPL), Richard Hook (ST-ECF), Gareth Hunt (NRAO), Glenn Miller (STScI), Koh-Ichiro Morita (NAOJ), Jan Noordam (NFRA), Michele Peron (ESO), Arnold Rots (SAO), Dick Shaw (chair, NOAO), Betty Stobie (Univ. of Arizona), Christian Veillet (CFHT), and Patrick Wallace (RAL).

The Local Organizing Committee was chaired by Perry Greenfield. Other members were David Adler, Paul Barrett, Howard Bushouse, Brian McLean, Lauretta Nagel, and Steve Hulbert, all of Space Telescope Science Institute. We thank them for a very well organized meeting. We also thank these other STScI staff: John Bedke for taking the conference photo, Mike Venturella for his help in producing the printed program, Christine Klicka for the ADASS XII graphics, and Carolyn Liou for the web site (and see Liou & Hulbert, p. 332).

Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the conference sponsors: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the European Southern Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg, the University of Arizona, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. Their support was critical to the success of ADASS XII.

ADASS Information

ADASS XIII will be held at the Palais des Congrès in Strasbourg, France, October 12-15, 2003, and will be hosted by the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg.

Details about ADASS XII, including the final program, are available from the conference web site. Links to all of the ADASS web sites, and electronic versions of the proceedings, can be found on the ADASS web site.


Harry E. Payne
Robert I. Jedrzejewski
Space Telescope Science Institute

Richard N. Hook
Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility

February 2003


© Copyright 2003 Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 390 Ashton Avenue, San Francisco, California 94112, USA
Table of Contents - Subject Index - Author Index - Search