The Exoscope

We are visual creatures. We want to understand things from the context of a larger view. And that is true with all the exoplanets we have known so far. How can you relate with these amazing orbs in a more direct way? When you look up in the night sky, where are the exoplanets?

{Drum roll}...The Exoscope.

The Exoscope is a web-based tool to enable you to see the locations of exoplanets in the sky. It's a tool for Exogazing, the activity of spotting stars with known exoplanets.

Exoscope is actually a spin of the awesome Chromoscope. The ability to change and blend the background to different wavelengths gives that dramatic feeling, and that is why I love Chromoscope so much!

The excellent developer, Stuart Lowe (@astronomyblog) and others did all the work to bring you that awesome goodness of chromoscope. I simply imported an exoplanet KML file, and the chromoscope engine did all the rest of putting the markers for the locations of the stars with known exoplanets.

Really, I didn’t do much. I just downloaded the chromoscope application (which is freely available) and added two lines of code to import the exoplanet KML and show the constellations by default. And that was it!

The hard work is actually up ahead. And that is how to always keep the exoplanet KML file updated.

I need help and ideas on how to generate the exoplanet KML file from the most updated source of exoplanet data, The Exoplanet Encyclopaedia. Also, I need some script to generate KML files from a CouchDB couchapp. So, if anyone can give leads on that regard, please ping me. For now, some info i can provide for whoever wants to take up the challenge is this: The developer of the most excellent exoplanet app for the iPhone/iPad (@exoplanetapp) has provided a digestible format of Jean Schneider’s exoplanet data, via The Open Exoplanet Catalogue. So, all I need is for someone to generate JSON data in addition to the XML files. I seriously need JSON so I can import them into my CouchDB exoplanet database app (which is also another work in progress).

Other tasks on the pipeline for this mini-project are:
1) How to center the field of view (FOV) on the exoplanet via a link from other sources (such as The Exoplanet Seeker). I like how WikiSky does it so i hope to implement the same thing.
2) How to host the image files into my own Amazon S3 account to ease the burden from Chromoscope.
3) How to add other stunning backgrounds
4) Cosmetic styling, and UX improvement for each exoplanet popup window (and how to pipe in data dynamically)

That’s it for now. I Hope that even while it’s still in progress, you’ll enjoy the stunning exoplanet landscape from The Exoscope!

Links:
Chromoscope
The Exoscope
Exogazing
The Open Exoplanet Catalogue
Exoplanet Encyclopedia

Exoplanets and Open Data

Something exciting is brewing behind the scenes between Exoplanets and Open Data. The developer of the excellent Exoplanet App (for iPhone) has started a repository on GitHub for Exoplanet datasets, called The Open Exoplanet Catalogue. The great thing is that this repository is a mix of automated and community-driven movement in terms of keeping up with the fast-paced incoming stream of raw exoplanet data. It opens up an open massive data set (OMDS) for the exoplanet community to tinker with.

The automated part, which interests me a lot--is a python script that pulls in the latest updates from our exoplanet pointman named Jean Schneider from the great Exoplanet Encyclopedia.

Here’s how I can briefly describe the process: Jean Schneider gets new exoplanet information, updates his database. The python “bot” script grabs Jean's newly-updated exoplanet data and re-generates new exoplanet XML files, then puts them to github. You may download and peek at that bot script from here. And most importantly, you can grab the latest exoplanet dataset in all it's XML glory--ready to be consumed by any app or software you can dream of.

For the community-driven part of the setup, anyone can contribute scripts. An example would be for someone to write a derivative of the python script to churn out exoplanet files into JSON format, instead of XML.

It is still on the early stages so at this point "some branches of this repository are updated automatically...and the master branch is updated manually for now, to ensure consistency."

This repository is everything I’ve ever wished for. And I am thankful for it. This would be very useful for the renewed field of Data Visualization, and Data Journalism. This system will truly benefit the community of Open Data Journalists and Researchers within the exoplanet community. On a side note, for all the Android Developers out there: Here’s all the latest data, now please build the Exoplanet App for Android! And for those who can code, please contribute to this endeavor!

"The purpose of the Internet will be to catch the alien mind. It will be coded by human fingers, but it will be truly alien."
~Terence Mckenna

Links:
Python Bot Script
The Open Exoplanet Catalogue at GitHub

Exoplanet Seeker and Wolfram|Alpha

Just a little geekery and heads-up for those who are so inclined. I've just managed to hack up a link to Wolfram|Alpha's data set from my crazy ol' Exoplanet Seeker thingie.

But wait! There’s something else goin' on here: since The Exoplanet Seeker’s auto-suggest feature is powered by Freebase, I’ve actually married Freebase and Wolfram|Alpha together! Although in a primitive way, I’ve proven that it is indeed possible to make them work together. (Hopefully, this gives out a message to both companies about a dream of mine--which is that Freebase and Wolfram|Alpha work together for the good of the interwebs.)

Now enough with the bragging and pipedreams. Let’s get down to business and to the revelation of the secret on how it was all done.

First, let me tell you about Wolfram|Alpha’s cool new feature: W|A Widgets! So I built an exoplanet widget (shown below) using W|A’s widget builder, and piped in the exoplanet name into the URL of the exoplanet info widget. That’s was all there is to it!

But by no means is it perfect. There are lots of data holes. Freebase is not complete with all the exoplanet names, thus it can only suggest what it “knows”. And even if Freebase “knows” an exoplanet name, Wolfram|Alpha often doesn’t know it yet (W|A is slower in terms of updating exoplanet data). And so, selecting the “Wolfram|Alpha” on the dropdown and then clicking “seek” will yield a “not valid input” on the popup window. Of course, all this will improve soon enough. And I appreciate Mr. Wolfram putting up a page specific to Exoplanets.

The field of exoplanet science is progressing so rapidly that there will come a time when a need for exoplanet informatics is needed, if an Open Citizen Science on exoplanet research is ever set up to deal with the data aspect of exoplanets. For now, i hope this serves as a quick reference for exoplanet enthusiasts out there.

By the way, there are cool astronomy widgets in W|A’s gallery. Two of which are shown below. Do check them out! And of course, you must build your own widget!

Links:
Astronomy Category in Wolfram|Alpha Widgets Directory
Wolfram|Alpha Exoplanet Page

A Data Pipe Dream

I have a dream, a data pipe dream. I'd like to share a vision on how to maximize the usefulness of data in the field of Exoplanet Science.

Even before I built the so-called Exoplanet Seeker, I had something else in mind. I wanted to build a "mash-up" from the treasure trove of data available about exoplanets. Much data on exoplanets are freely available but there is no standard as to how they are shared, and have no structure as to be usable by other web applications. And there is no way to channel them to other applications. In other words there are no "pipes" to send them through in order to make them more useful.

I am thankful that exoplanet researchers are sharing their data online. But now we must move to the next logical step. Most of the data providers do not expose their data in a structured way like XML or JSON. So far, the only one I saw that is friendly to programmers is LookUP, as they share data in XML, JSON, and AVM format.

Currently, there's no way for web developers to create compelling Web Apps or "mashups" from the data available at The Exoplanet Encyclopedia, NStED, or Exoplanets.org. The best I could do was to come up with a very simple exoplanet seeker, in the hopes that it signals a vision of what is to come in the next few years as more exoplanet discoveries pour in.

Think of the hundreds of thousands of exoplanets that will fill scattered databases across the earth. Think of how many Petabytes of data all these discoveries will mount to. And finally, think of how wonderful it would be if all the exoplanet researchers and planet-hunters in the world shared their data in the form that is usable by other Scientists, and open to Citizens as well.

I believe that when an interoperability standard is developed (perhaps something like an "Exoplanet Markup Language", ExoML), or when exoplanet data sources started sharing their data semantically, then a new form of Science will emerge from this abundance of structured Exoplanetary Science data. Awesome things can emerge from this information pipe infrastructure. Perhaps even some new and novel discoveries can come out of it.

If programmers can readily create visualizations from open data, or run simulations using structured data, or create cross references from different planetary characteristics along with their host stars' qualities then perhaps patterns can be discovered, like how they discovered the relationship between the lithium content of stars and the presence of planets around them. I'm sure there are other clues that are hidden in all these data, just waiting to be mined. Even old data can still contain yet undiscovered treasures, like how an exoplanet was found hidden within Hubble's old data archives.

This data pipe dream must have been apparent in two of my previous posts, "The Extremophile Zone" that hints some aspect of this data infrastructure (injecting how social media can play a role in science), and another is "Life is a Pattern", a flash fiction that gives a glimpse of this vision in a metaphorical narrative.

I hope that some organization picks up on this thread to enable a collaborative data pipeline among exoplanet researchers around the world.

The Role of Computer Simulations in Exoplanetology

A few posts ago, I have predicted about the huge potential of utilizing computer simulations to help in the theoretical aspects of Exoplanetology.
This latest software in data visualization is a welcome news in the field: It makes analysis and visualization of huge data sets possible without the aid of a supercomputer. It's algorithm slices up data into more manageable chunks, then stitches it back together on the fly, so that the data can be manipulated in three dimensions, all on a computer with the power and capacity of a high-end laptop.
I think it will help amateurs to jump in on any data intensive field of research that deals with huge data sets, and make visualizations. I can't wait to download this software and run my own simulations of planet-formations.
I will keep a close watch as it will be released as open source sometime in March.

Now here's the surprise:

A few days after reading about that software and drooling over it in my sleep, some news came about a computer simulation that solved how massive stars form. A three-dimensional computer simulation was used to model the collapse of a giant interstellar gas cloud to form a massive star. Now I do not know what software they used to pull off such a feat. Did they get an early edition of the software I was raving about? It's all shrouded in secrecy.
Whatever the case, the role of computer simulations will be a very important factor in Exoplanet Research in the coming years. And with Open Source Software, it will indeed be very interesting for amateurs and enthusiasts in the field.