Hello metadata enthusiasts,

While it's been some time since we've sent out any announcements on
the Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project and the Astronomy
Visualization Metadata standard, but there's been a lot of
developments going on behind the scenes. 2009 promises to see some
exciting developments!

Briefly, VAMP is about a standard for embedding rich contextual
information about astronomical imagery into the image files directly.
It forms a database schema that allows for a lot of innovative web and
software development, as it captures a lot of information about the
image: captions, sky coordinates, color mapping, etc. Visit the
project website for more info:

http://virtualastronomy.org/

A number of missions have been actively pursuing AVM tagging projects
and even applying for grants to support development of VAMP-related
projects. These include STScI/MAST, ADS, ESO/ESA, and Spitzer/IPAC.
Just as exciting is ongoing development within the planetarium
software community to build AVM support into a variety of fulldome
systems in development by Evans & Sutherland/Digistar, SCISS/Uniview,
and Sky-Skan/Digital Sky.

Here is a list of some updates for the Virtual Astronomy Multimedia
Project and the Astronomy Visualization Metadata standard.

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1) AAS Meetup on Wednesday

2) Photoshop CS4 Metadata Panels

3) Updated CS3 Panel (bugfix)

4) AVM-Driven Website Development

5) AVM Programming Resources (EXIFTool, Python)
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1) AAS Meetup on Wednesday

Are you in Pasadena for the AAS? Would you be interested in an
informal meet-up to discuss the VAMP project? Send me an email and
indicate what times you would be available on Wednesday from Lunchtime
through evening. If there is interest I will announce a meetup time/
place by Tuesday evening. It can provide a great opportunity to learn
about image tagging techniques and the software support for VAMP/AVM
that is under development.


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2) Photoshop CS4 Metadata Panels

Adobe significantly changed the interface for accessing XMP embedded
metadata in its CS4 product line which, though potentially more
powerful, offered no backwards compatibility for previous metadata
panel design. Fortunately Amit Kapadia, working at ESA/ESO in Garching
Germany has been able to create a new set of CS4 panels using the
Adobe Flex programming environment. This now opens up

If you are using the CS4 products, you can download the AVM beta
panels here:

http://virtualastronomy.org/avm_metadata.php#6

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3) Updated CS3 Panel (bugfix)

We have just discovered a format error in the existing CS3 panels that
embeds the Spatial.FITSheader tag in the incorrect format. Fortunately
the fix is simple and requires only deleting a single line of text in
the AVM-4-Coordinates.txt file. If you use this keyword, you can
update your existing panel by searching for this block of text and
deleting the indicated line. The files will be updated soon on the
VAMP website and in the next FITS Liberator release.

edit_text(
fbname: '$$$/FitsLiberator/Metadata/Keyword/
Spatial.FITSheader=Spatial.FITSheader',
height: 100,
DELETE >>> container_type: alt_struct, <<< THIS LINE
v_scroller: true,
horizontal: align_fill,
xmp_ns_prefix: 'avm',
xmp_namespace: 'http://www.communicatingastronomy.org/avm/1.0/'
,
xmp_path: 'Spatial.FITSheader'
);


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4) AVM-Driven Website Development

AVM provides a powerful database schema that can form the basis for
dynamically-generated websites. Using tagged images, a web developer
can extract the embedded information and use it to populate the
database of the content management system. Several projects are
already underway to do just this.

NASA's Herschel Science Center, as part of the ESA Herschel
collaboration, has an operation AVM-enabled website. The image
galleries draw the title and caption text from the embedded AVM
metadata, which is also available for browsing in the downloaded
imagery. The website extracts and displays the metadata using simple
PHP code and an XML parser. Check it out at:

http://www.herschel.caltech.edu/

The Spitzer Science Center will deploy an entirely new AVM-driven
website in the coming weeks. This website internally features full
reading/writing of AVM metadata, so that any updates made to the
website database will automatically be written back into the
associated imagery, keeping image downloads in synchronization with
the website data. The new site will offer full color mapping data for
each image in an innovative new way, made possible by the AVM schema.
Full WCS coordinate metadata has been recovered for over 90% of the
Spitzer imagery, facilitating its display in software like WorldWide
Telescope and Google Sky.

ESO is currently developing a new AVM-aware media archive to be
launched during third quarter of 2009. The actual tagging of images
with e.g. coordinate information will however only happen after the
new media archive has been deployed. The base components of the media
archive system will also be open sourced for the benefit of the
community (see e.g. http://code.google.com/p/python-xmp-toolkit/). The
media archive will furthermore be integrated on our other sites like
e.g. www.spacetelescope.org.

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5) AVM Programming Resources (EXIFTool, Python)

As a byproduct of ongoing website development, new programmer tools
for accessing AVM metadata that has been embedded using Adobe's XMP
format. Such tools should be considered in beta development phases.

EXIFTool: The SESO media group, developing the new Spitzer website,
have released a profile for the open source EXIFTool software suite
that allows direct access to the AVM metadata. You can learn more and
download the new profile at:

http://github.com/clr/astronomy_visualization_metadata_exiftool_profile/tree/mas\
ter

The ESO group is developing a python-based wrapper for the Exempi
library that is based on Adobe's XMP Toolkit, allowing easy scripting
access to AVM tags. More information is online at:

http://code.google.com/p/python-xmp-toolkit

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Look for more updates in the coming weeks as more projects begin VAMP
development and more development tools become available. Please feel
free to contact me if you need more information or would be interested
in participating in future development of the AVM standard.

Robert Hurt (chair)

VAMP standards team:

Lars Lindberg Christensen (ESO)
Ryan Wyatt (California Academy of Sciences)
Eli Bressart (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

http://virtualastronomy.org/


| Dr. Robert L. Hurt | Spitzer Science Center/Public Affairs
| Caltech MS 220-6 | 626-395-1825 (office) 626-568-0673 (fax)
| Pasadena, CA 91125 | http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu