Programming Distributed Computing Systems by Carlos A. Varela

For each search, the server application keeps track of a population of individual stars, each of which is attached to a possible model of the Milky Way. Each stream removed is characterized by six parameters: percent of stars in the stream the angular position in the stripe the three spatial components (two angles, plus the radial distance from Earth) defining the removed cylinder and a measure of width. The program then attempts to create a new, uniformly dense wedge of stars from the input wedge by removing streams of data. width and applies self-optimizing probabilistic separation techniques (i.e., evolutionary algorithms) to extract the optimized tidal streams. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, divides starfields into wedges of about 2.5 deg. As the project evolves, it might turn its attention to other star streams.

It could also provide insight on the dark matter issue. Mapping such interstellar streams and their dynamics with high accuracy may provide crucial clues for understanding the structure, formation, evolution, and gravitational potential distribution of the Milky Way and similar galaxies. Varela.īy mid-2009 the project's main astrophysical interest is in the Sagittarius Stream, an immense stellar stream emanating from the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy that wraps around the Milky Way. It is operated by a team that includes astrophysicist Heidi Jo Newberg and computer scientists Malik Magdon-Ismail, Bolesław Szymański and Carlos A. Purpose and design [ edit is a collaboration between the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's departments of Computer Science and Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy and is supported by the U.S. Its secondary objective is to develop and optimize algorithms for volunteer computing. With and it is the third computing project of this type that has the investigation of phenomena in interstellar space as its primary purpose.

Using spare computing power from over 38,000 computers run by over 27,000 active volunteers as of November 2011, the project aims to generate accurate three-dimensional dynamic models of stellar streams in the immediate vicinity of the Milky Way. edu /milkyway is a volunteer computing project in the astrophysics category, running on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. A dwarf galaxy being disrupted by the Milky Way's gravity (the Milky Way is not shown, and would be at the center of the picture)

Programming Distributed Computing Systems by Carlos A. Varela