about galaxy "velocity cubes"

[Roy Williams]

I agree with Adam. It should be clear to the radio astronomers a simple 
thing is sufficient. The only necessary metadata is labeling/describing 
the axes of the cube, and providing min and max values. The VO-supplied 
libraries should work with this simple information and the VO registry. 
An interoperable representation of the radio cubes in HDF5 or FITS would 
complete the picture, ways to subset the cubes, access protocols for 
cubes, etc.

The next level -- after acceptance of the above by the community -- 
could allow computers to "understand" the meaning of the axes by 
allowing complex metadata (utypes, STC, Char, semantic linking, etc 
etc). Moving too fast on these advanced concepts could make the VO look 
out of touch with real scientists.

I suggest that "full metadata characterization" is not interesting to 
99% of scientists.

Roy


On 12/07/2010 6:33 AM, Adam Brazier wrote:
> Yes indeed. The radio astronomers with whom I am working are excited
> about the prospect of their data cubes being easily and directly
> embeddable in VO protocols and any suggestion that they are "horribly
> wrong" or the like is going to be met with reactive hostility and a
> complete lack of compliance with whatever else we suggest.