VAMP Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project

The astronomical education and public outreach (EPO) community plays a key role in conveying the results of scientific research to the general public. A key product of EPO development is a variety of non-scientific public image resources, both derived from scientific observations and created as artistic visualizations of scientific results. This refers to general image formats such as JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, not scientific FITS datasets. Such resources are currently scattered across the internet in a variety of galleries and archives, but are not searchable in any coherent or unified way.

Just as Virtual Observatory (VO) standards open up all data archives to a common query engine, the EPO community will benefit greatly from a similar mechanism for image search and retrieval. Existing metadata standards for the Virtual Observatory are tailored to the management of research datasets and only cover EPO resources (like publication quality imagery) at the “collection” level and are thus insufficient for the needs of the EPO community.

The primary focus of the AVM is on print-ready and screen ready astronomical imagery, which has been rendered from telescopic observations (also known as “pretty pictures”). Such images can combine data acquired at different wavebands and from different observatories. While the primary intent is to cover data-derived astronomical images, there are broader uses as well. Specifically, the most general subset of this schema is also appropriate for describing artwork and illustrations of astronomical subject matter. This is covered in some detail in later sections.

The intended users of astronomical imagery cover a broad variety of fields: educators, students, journalists, enthusiasts, and scientists. The core set of required tags define the key elements needed in a practical database for identification of desired resources. For example, one might choose to search for images of the Crab Nebula that include both X-ray and visible light elements, or for any images within 2 degrees of a specified location on the sky that include at least some data from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Future plans include “multimedia modules” and “planetarium modules” into the AVM standard.

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2. Metadata Management

Managed by:
Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project, Metadata Work Package (Robert Hurt)

These documents define metadata tags that describe the Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM). This metadata schema has been developed within the framework of the IAU Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project (VAMP).

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3. AVM Tagging Tool

(November 2007)
The alpha version of the AVM Tagging Tool is now online! This web form will create an XMP formatted XML file of the AVM tags. This file can then be imported to Adobe Photoshop or Bridge to attach the metadata to the image via the XMP standard. You will still need the AVM Panels (see Users Guide below) to verify the metadata once in Adobe Photoshop/Bridge. Without the panels, you will not be able to review the tags from within the program(s).

Go to the AVM Tagging Tool

This tool works best with Mozilla Firefox or Safari.

Please see the Users Guide for directions on using our initial version of the AVM Tagging Tool.

If you would like to help with development of the AVM Tagging Tool, please contact Adrienne (agauthier@as.arizona.edu).

Our wish list for functionality for future versions of the AVM-TT includes:

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4. CSV to AVM tagging script

The .zip file below contains php scripts that converts from a text file in comma separated format (csv) to xmp output that can be imported in Adobe Bridge (image by image) and "glue" the xmp info into the header of the tiff or jpeg file:
Download csv2avm.zip (9KB)

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5. Users Guide

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6. Adobe Metadata Panels

Adobe CS4 Beta Panels (Updated May 22, 2009)
AVM Adobe CS4 Metadata Panels

These are beta panels for Adobe CS4 applications. Please send inquires/bugs/comments to lnielsen@eso.org or akapadia@eso.org.

Instructions

Replace [username] with your computer user account name. If these folders do not exist create them.

Adobe Metadata Panels for pre-CS4

Archive.zip (Updated Mar 25, 2008)
or
AVM-1-Creator.txt (Updated Mar 25, 2008)
AVM-2-Content.txt (Updated Mar 25, 2008)
AVM-3-Observation.txt (Updated Mar 25, 2008)
AVM-4-Coordinates.txt (Updated Mar 25, 2008)
AVM-5-Publisher.txt (Updated Mar 25, 2008)
AVM-6-FitsLiberator.txt (Updated Mar 25, 2008)

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7. Example of Tagged Images

7.1 Example files with XMP (AVM 1.1)

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Spitzer Space Telescope

7.2 Example JPEG files with XMP (AVM 1.0 - deprecated)

8. Chandra's Pinpoint WCS

This software simplifies retrieval of world coordinate system (WCS) data from FITS images for outreach astronomy images. Desktop planetarium packages aware of these data can intelligently position astronomical images on the digital sky lending a unique context to the outreach image. Read more on GitHub:
https://github.com/kapadia/PinpointWCS