Title: Montage: a grid portal and software toolkit for science-grade astronomical image mosaicking

Authors: Joseph C. Jacob, Daniel S. Katz, G. Bruce Berriman, John C. Good, Anastasia C. Laity, Ewa Deelman, Carl Kesselman, Gurmeet Singh, Mei-Hui Su, Thomas A. Prince, Roy Williams

Addresses: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, USA. ' Computational Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Center for Computation and Technology, and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA. ' Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ' Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ' Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ' Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, USA. ' Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, USA. ' Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, USA. ' Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, USA. ' Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy Department, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. ' Center for Advanced Computing Research, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA

Abstract: Montage is a portable software toolkit to construct custom, science-grade mosaics that preserve the astrometry and photometry of astronomical sources. The user specifies the dataset, wavelength, sky location, mosaic size, coordinate system, projection, and spatial sampling. Montage supports massive astronomical datasets that may be stored in distributed archives. Montage can be run on both single- and multi-processor computers, including clusters and grids. Standard grid tools are used to access remote data or run Montage on remote computers. This paper describes the architecture, algorithms, performance, and usage of Montage as both a software toolkit and a grid portal.

Keywords: astronomy; image mosaics; grid portals; TeraGrid; virtual observatory; astronomical datasets; grid computing; software toolkit.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSE.2009.026999

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 2009 Vol.4 No.2, pp.73 - 87

Published online: 12 Jul 2009 *

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