Edwin A. Valentijn's Homepage
Department of Astronomy University of Groningen The Netherlands
Professor in Astronomical Information Technology at the
University of Groningen, since dec 2005.
Coordinating the Target
project and leading OmegaCEN
a National datacenter for wide field astronomical imaging,
funded by the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy NOVA.
OmegaCEN is building and supporting advanced Survey Information
Systems. At the center, ~17 staff and PhDs are involved in
research and development of data basing and processing of very
large data sets.
Founder of OmegaCEN
(2002), Astro-WISE
(2001), Target
( 2008), Target Holding bv
(2009), Intrinfo
(2009), Stichting
Infoversum ( 2012),
Infoversum Producties bv, Exploitatie bv,
( 2012).
Chair of Board Infoversum Foundation - Infoversum
Lectures in the fall of 2012 : Virtual
Observations and Datamining in Astronomy
On 13 May 2008 I gave a public lecture (oratie) at the occasion
of my formal inauguration:
The Information Universe
.pdf
of
the lecture - booklet ISBN 978-90-367-3473-8
.ppt
of the lecture
my works direct at "Information as a whole"
26 August 2011 Noorderzon festival Groningen, QU3,
presenting at the Target floor the act:
"God is an eJ" attended by over 5600
visitors.
World premiere to public MS's World Wide Telescope with
Kinect
Postal address:
Prof. Dr Edwin A.Valentijn
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute
P.O. Box 800
NL-9700 AV Groningen
The Netherlands
Telephone (work):
+31
(0)50 3634011
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secretary
+31 (0)50
3634036
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mobile (work) +31 (0) 6 48276416
direct fax(work) +31 (0)50 3632003
email:
Edwin A.Valentijn
CV
I did my PhD at the Sterrewacht Leiden, on Radio
Investigations of Clusters of Galaxies with Prof H. van der Laan
as supervisor (1978), studying the intra cluster medium, cluster
radio haloes and head-tail radio sources.
After that, I worked on X-ray astronomy (Einstein obervatory,)
and optical surcface photometry, studying cooling flows, at the
European Southern Observatory in Geneva and Garching, Munich. At
ESO I was chairman of the working groups supervising the
development of the MIDAS image analysis system.
In 1984 I returned to the Netherlands to help building up the
new UK-NL optical observatory at La Palma (Canarias) and studied
dark matter in dumbbell and cD galaxies. In 1989 I published
with A. Lauberts the first large digital image survey (ESO-LV),
which led to my paper on the opacities and dust content of
spiral galaxies (Nature 1990).
During the 90's I worked at SRON-Groningen and ESA
Villafranca- Madrid to build and commission the Infrared Space
Observatory (ISO) satellite's Short Wave Spectrometer, which I
used to pioneer the dectection of cool extragalactic molecular
hydrogen- unseen matter in the universe.
Since 1998 I work at the Kapteyn Institute for the OmegaCAM
project which led to the founding of the OmegaCEN data center.
My current research interests focus, apart from dark matter, on
the information theory of the universe and data modeling
abstractions.
extensive
CV
The founding fathers of Astro-Wise
The GANG of Astro-WISE - the founding farthers of the
Astro-Wise architecture in the days the system was perceived-
Nice April 2001.
Picture by Emmanual Bertin, from left to right: Drs Danny
Boxhoorn, Dr Kor Begeman, Dr Edwin A. Valentijn, Dr Roeland
Rengelink and Dr Erik Deul.
The ESO-LV project
The first large digital imaging project with 32000 images
scanned in the '80s
Publications
Up-to-date overviews are available at:
Current
In 2011 we delivered our wide field imaging camera to
ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile -
see VST and
268 Mpix OmegaCAM start work
Here one of our first pictures, reduced at OmegaCEN with
AstroWise of M17- Omega Nebula
Coming years we will handle our Guaranteed time observations
and the Kids 1500 Square degree survey.
We are also preparing for an "OmegaCAM in Space" on board the
Euclid satelite.
Things which make life even more interesting
I owned, sailed and maintained an oak- wooden French sailing
cutter (Dundee) for 25 years. Steven Gerritsen is now
essentially re-building her see Orion.
Like the fantastic "Theater te Water" on the ship the
"Verwondering" the "Vrijhaven" of Groningen made me (amoungst
other things) move to Groningen in the 80's.
I enjoyed very much Prof
Blaauw sails back home from Vlieland on board of Rudolf Le
Poole's skutsje.
In memoriam Adriaan
Blaauw 1914-2010
My favourite picture of amazing Adriaan on this memorable trip.
I'm working hard to build a fantastic dome theater here
downtown in Groningen. The Infoversum a "vrijhaven" for arts,
science, immersive visualization and verwondering.
March 2013: construction works started
Some of the developments I'll post on my Facebook.
Edwin A. Valentijn | 
