First Topic Map using data from NED

Snapshots from an example Topic Map

In the middle of 2001 we undertook to construct a Topic Map based on some data for a few nearby galaxies. This included obtaining the data from NED in an XML format being developed at CDS and using references from ADS. Here we present some snapshots of an early cut where just the HTML output from NED was used (fed to a perl script to create the XML file).


The topic map itself can be accessed here. It contains data (publications and authors) on just a handful of nearby objects. But it serves as a good introduction to topic maps.


We have used the Omnigator from Ontopia for this work. You too can try it out using the XML file: ned1.xtm. It uses just two associations viz. author-published-paper and paper-mentions-object. Only 8 objects (nearby galaxies), their references from ADS and the authors of those papers are used as subjects (topics) besides a few attributes like the RA, Dec and redshift.


People who have been involved are: Ashish Mahabal, George Djorgovski, Roy Williams, Robert Brunner, Joe Mazzarella, Barry Madore.


All figures below are in PNG format.


The top view of the topic map.

Object as topic.

Occurence of the topic object.

Paper as topic.

Occurence of the topic paper.

Author as topic.

Occurence of the topic author.

Description as topic.

The paper-mentions-objectrelationship.


The author-published-paper relationship (split in two figures).

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Ashish Mahabal
Last Outdated: Oct 17 2002
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~aam/science/topicmaps/nedtm.html