ITR - ASE - int+dmc+soc: Automated Astrometry for Time-Domain and Distributed Astrophysics

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AST-0428465HoggThis project is an international collaboration between computer scientists and astrophysicists to build and operate an astrometry engine to create correct, standards-based astrometric headers for every useful astronomical image ever taken, past and future, in any state of archival disarray. This service product will be developed, tested, and installed at ground-based observatories, providing a standards-based description of the usually non-linear transformation between image coordinates and sky coordinates, with the intent being to have no 'false positives' but maybe the occasional 'no answer'. As the product matures, it will return calibration and band-pass information from standards identified in the image, and future versions may even be able to work without any prior information about approximate scale, location, and orientation. Some subset of trustworthy data will be used to improve the astrometric catalogs and enhance the calibration engine. Removing this barrier to the use of legacy or badly archived data will greatly extend astronomical timelines into the past. This research will facilitate any work with distributed heterogeneous datasets, and create robust and efficient algorithms for solving the fundamental registration problem across many fields of science. The automation of astrometry will free a great deal of future time and effort throughout the community, and the processing of both new and existing material will significantly enhance the available data archives and their use for both science and education.