Generating Complex Astronomy Workflows

Abstract

Astronomy has a rich heritage of discovery using image data sets that cover the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Image data sets in one frequency range have often been studied in isolation from those in other frequency ranges. This is mostly a consequence of the diverse properties of the data collections themselves. Images are delivered in different coordinate systems, map projections, spatial samplings, and image sizes, and the pixels themselves are rarely co-registered on the sky. Moreover, the spatial extent of many astronomically important structures, such as clusters of galaxies and star formation regions, is often substantially greater than that of individual images.