TOPCAT and SAMP: developing the leading astronomical catalogue software

TOPCAT及其相关库是领先的天文目录软件，已被许多大型项目采用。它的发展到这个阶段的国家和国际接受，由马克·泰勒博士，资助，直到最近的AstroGrid赠款，并一直在紧急赠款下继续。STFC的支持将于2010年底结束，届时，面对使用一流设施和组合多波长目录的现有项目日益增长的需求，这一特别有用的软件将开始过时。它必须继续科普虚拟天文台不断变化的标准及其主要用户不断变化的要求。特别是，它打算添加一个Python接口，以提高可用性，并帮助集成到越来越多地用于主要天文（和其他）项目的大规模目录处理管道中。该提案要求提供24个月的资金，以便对TOPCAT进行目前用户最要求的改进，并使其完全符合正在制定的虚拟天文台协议。这笔资金还将支持简单天文信息协议SAMP的工作，该协议涵盖了用户计算机上运行的不同工具之间的数据交换，因此TOPCAT可以与许多其他工具一起工作，包括微软全球望远镜和赫歇尔交互式处理环境。SAMP由Taylor等人（2009）定义，Mark Taylor的协议实现现在嵌入到TOPCAT和其他标准天文工具中。

TOPCAT, with its associated libraries, is the leading astronomical catalogue software, and has been adopted by many large-scale projects. Its development to this stage of national and international acceptance, by Dr. Mark Taylor, was funded until recently by the AstroGrid grant, and has been continued under an urgency grant. STFC support is due to run out in late 2010, when this exceptionally useful software will begin to become obsolete in the face of the increasing requirements from existing projects using front-rank facilities and combining multi-wavelength catalogues. It must continue to adapt to cope with the changing standards of the Virtual Observatory and the changing requirements of its chief users. In particular, it is intended to add a Python interface, to improve useability and aid integration into large-scale catalogue-handling pipelines of the type that are increasingly being used for major astronomical (and other) projects. This proposal requests funding for 24 months to provide the improvements to TOPCAT most requested by its current users and to keep it fully compliant with the developing Virtual Observatory protocols. The funding will also support work on the Simple Astronomical Messaging Protocol, SAMP, which covers data exchange between different tools running on a user's computer, so that TOPCAT can work with many other tools, including the Microsoft World-Wide Telescope and the Herschel Interactive Processing Environment. SAMP was defined by Taylor et al. (2009), and Mark Taylor's implementations of the protocol are now embedded in TOPCAT and other standard astronomical tools.