Title
Towards a big data exploration framework for astronomical archives
Abstract
Exploiting big data astronomical archives is a mandatory and challenging activity due to dramatically increasing sizes and high complexity of datasets coming from radio telescopes or space missions. Visual exploration and discovery can be invaluable tools providing prompt and intuitive insights into the intrinsic data characteristics, enabling scientists to rapidly identify interesting areas within which to apply computationally expensive algorithms or to discover correlations in data patterns. The paper outlines a new approach for creating a user-friendly, integrated and cross-platform framework to facilitate big data access, visualization and exploration, thus empowering astrophysicists to focus on pitching new ideas for scientific advances. We present a flexible distributed architecture striking a balance between local interactive exploration tools and remote services responsible for hiding data complexity. Remote services communicate with advanced distributed computing infrastructures presenting a meaningful lightweight version of the archive dataset obtained by mining or noise filtering methods. They are interfaced with science gateway technologies in order to allow collaborative activity between users and to provide customization and scalability of data analysis/processing workflows hiding underlying technicalities. Local tools enable interactive visualization optimized for ubiquitous computing environments, intuitively controlling the resulting visualisation. The motivations behind such a framework are envisaged to meet the requirements of the exploitation of the Gaia mission outcomes and are shown in the paper by a number of case studies. The presented framework can potentially have a profound impact on astronomical and astrophysical communities in the big data era, allowing to quickly understand datasets, thus aiding in adopting novel ways for scientific discovery.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/HPCSim.2014.6903707
High Performance Computing & Simulation
Keywords
Field
DocType
Big Data,astronomy computing,data analysis,data visualisation,ubiquitous computing,Gaia mission,advanced distributed computing infrastructures,astrophysicists,big data access,big data astronomical archives,big data exploration framework,collaborative activity,data analysis,data complexity,data processing workflows,flexible distributed architecture,interactive exploration tools,interactive visualization,intrinsic data characteristics,noise filtering methods,radio telescopes,scientific discovery,space missions,ubiquitous computing environments,visual exploration,visualisation,Big Data,Data Analysis,Science Gateway,Scientific Visualization,Service Oriented Architectures,Software Services
Data science,World Wide Web,Visualization,Computer science,Interactive visualization,Space exploration,Ubiquitous computing,Big data,Workflow,Personalization,Scalability,Distributed computing
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.36
11
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Eva Sciacca18311.80
Pistagna, C.220.36
Ugo Becciani3409.81
Alessandro Costa4306.35