Mapping the universe with open source software
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| The project, funded by NASA, originally began in 1998 as the Digital
| Galaxy Project, and was intended to create an accurate, interactive,
| 3-D representation of the Milky Way galaxy. In 2000, Hayden's Department
| of Astrophysics decided to expand the project and rename it DigitalU
| niverse to reflect its new goal to map the rest of the known universe.
| They discovered, however, that the software they had developed was noto
| pen source, and the resulting restrictions prevented them from adding
| the additional capabilities they needed to continue their project. To
| complicate matters, because the software ran on an SGI supercomputer,
| it was virtually inaccessible.
|
| Fortunately, Stuart Levy, a developer for the National Center for
| Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), had created an open source tool
| named Partiview that he used to explore large data sets on his laptop.
| Developers at Hayden needed a tool that would interpret the large
| collection of data on the universe and regurgitate it as useful and
| comprehensible information. Partiview was a perfect fit for their needs.
| In April 2002, developers at Hayden began offering Digital Universe and
| the Partiview viewing tool for free download on their Web site. According
| to Brian Abbott, manager of Digital Universe at Hayden, "since that time,
| we have had over 100,000 downloads of the Digital Universe atlas,
| Partiview, and other data products combined."
|
| Partiview is licensed under the Illinois Open Source License, which
| has been officially certified by the OSI. The Digital Universe license,
| while not open source, allows users to freely download and distribute
| verbatim copies of the Atlas, as well as add data and alter existing
| data. "It is free to those who wish to use it on a PC, for personal
| or educational use," says Abbott. "But we have retained some control
| over the data sets to maintain their quality. A curatorial process
| is necessary to maintain our standards for accuracy."
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http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/160217
API's to Google Maps (among others, e.g. Yahoo's maps) are a good first step
as well.
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