WWW in Astronomy and Related Space Sciences

André Heck
Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, France
Daniel Egret
Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS), Strasbourg, France

• Introduction
• Astronomy leaps onto the Web
• The Star*s Family
• The `Weaving the Astronomy Web' (WAW) Conference
• Conclusion
• References
• Brief Biographies

Abstract:

Beyond participating in the AstroWeb consortium, our institution provides WWW access to the databases of the Star*s Family. It also organized the first large WWW meeting devoted to astronomy and related space sciences: the Weaving the Astronomy Web (WAW) conference (6-7 April 1995).

Introduction

Mid-1993, astronomy WWW services started flourishing on the Web.
In July 1994, a server at NASA/JPL, recorded one million document requests within a few days: this server was offering, not more than a few hours after their acquisition, images of the collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, observed by space probes or ground-based telescopes from all over the planet. This example is a striking illustration of the dramatic importance taken by the Web in astronomy and related space sciences.

Astronomy leaps onto the Web

The astronomical community showed a very early interest to the World Wide Web: see, e.g. the invited contribution by White (1993). Several dozen WWW servers were already available in mid-1993, and several hundreds in mid-1994. The astronomical community was ready to leap onto the Web, because of its familiarity with the international collaboration through the data networks, and its computer infrastructure.

Let us characterize some of these servers, and propose a typology of the existing atronomy services on the Web.

• Astronomical institutes often provide some general introductory information about the institution offering the service, including for instance a short description of the existing facilities and current research topics. Such pages are sometimes complemented by staff personal pages, and by pointers (hyperlinks) to associated institutions or frequently used services.

  Examples: Astronomical Observatory of Bologna; Lund Observatory

• Observatories or observing facilities provide access to documentation related to the instruments, and to the time allocation procedure, to observing schedules, and to local updated meteorological information.

  Examples: The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope; European Southern Observatory

• Agencies and distributed organizations, often at an international scale, offer an integrated top-down view of documents and research activities from different sites.

  Examples: NASA; ESA

• Databases and information systems related to specific space or ground-based observing facilities, and data centers, provide search facilities making use of WAIS or gopher indexes, or using the form and script features of Mosaic. One of the appealing aspects is, of course, to bring a wide variety of possible searches under a common interface.

  Examples: Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS); NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE); HEASARC

• Preprint and abstract servers (often not astronomy-specific) are popular tools, and the question of providing full electronic publications on the Web is very seriously addressed by the astronomical community (see for instance AAS Newsletters).

  Examples: ADS Abstract Service; ADASS III Proceedings

• Compilations of astronomical or related space science resources use a very powerful feature of the WWW for putting together in the same service documents, data or information coming for various sites.

  Examples: WebStars: Astrophysics in Cyberspace; NASA/JPL server for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9; Starlink

• Yellow-page services and compilations of anchors towards all the above-mentioned services, including databases and personal web pages, use the hypertext functionality to provide immediate links to the decribed services.

  Examples: The Star*s Family products (see below); The AstroWeb database (Jackson et al., 1994)

The Star*s Family

Star*s Family. This is the generic name for a growing collection of directories, dictionaries and databases, organized around three sets of master files, of which we will mention here the WWW version:

• StarWorlds (Heck et al., 1994), an on-line directory of astronomy, space sciences, and related organizations of the world (more than 5000 entries from about 100 entries with many active URLs);
• StarBits (Heck et al., 1994), an on-line dictionary of abbreviations, acronyms, contractions and symbols in astronomy, space sciences and related fields (more than 80,000 entries);
• StarHeads (Heck, 1995a), a database of individual web pages of astronomers and related space scientists (about 1,000 entries with active URLs).

All together, they can be reached via the CDS homepage giving access to the various CDS services, as well as to external astronomy resources such as AstroWeb

The hypertextual structure of the databases on the CDS Mosaic server includes, beyond the search mechanisms, general introductory documents, access to forms, tips for usage, hot news, e-mailing facilities, lists of national telephone, telefax and telex codes, and so on. All the facilities cross-point to each other, with possible active navigation via retrieved URLs. At the time of writing, upgrading plans include some logical syntax capabilities, underlying thesaurus structure and, last but not least, retrieval of observing facilities on the basis of their location on our planet (especially useful for observing campaigns).

The `Weaving the Astronomy Web' (WAW) Conference

This was the first international meeting specifically devoted to the WWW in astronomy and related space sciences. Proceedings are both reachable electronically through the WAW homepage and published traditionally (Egret & Heck, 1995).

Conclusion

This explosion of documents on the web is not a bed of roses. New facilities and new possibilities bring in naturally new questions and new problems. Some of the Mosaic servers have already reached a quite fair degree of maturity. Others are still a bit in a wild stage by lack of structure and homogeneity or simply because they offer, let us say it frankly, rubbish of little interest. Although quite a few features have been adopted de facto by the developers of documents on the web, there is a definite need for an ethical charter. It could concern quite a number of features from the substances of the documents themselves to their aesthetical presentation and a number of recommended functionalities. These questions, and more, are addressed in a review paper by A. Heck (1995b).

This shows that there are non-negligible educational aspects to be taken into account as to the introduction and training of young and not-so-young people to the new technologies within the various communities. This is true not only for scientists, but also for librarians and documentalists who will see their rôle significantly changing within their institution and who will deal with a more and more virtual material.

It would be too hazardous to play the game of predicting the long-term impact of this on-going evolution of the information technology. The future is too fuzzy and all predictions are risky. Two years ago, Mosaic was unknown while today it allows a daily cyberspace navigation at a planetary scale. Who would still dare predicting the status of computer technology and information handling a couple of years ahead?

References