Projectname: WHISP Database Project

Authors: Dolf Sijbring en Jurjen Kamphuis

Project members

Fase: initiative fase (project instruction)


The WHISP Database Project

Project plan


1 Project definition

1.1 Result

The result of the WHISP (Westerbork observations of neutral Hydrogen in Irregular and SPiral galaxies) Database Project is threefold:

These three results define the result of the WHISP Database Project.

1.2 Confinement of the result

As a result the WHISP Database Project does not contain

The intention of the WHISP Database Project is that with the help of the database other astronomers can quickly analyse the properties of (groups of) galaxies.

2 Background

2.1 Motive

The motive for this project is that Ph.D. students have to reduce large amounts of HI data. This reduction may have as a result that the project time of a Ph.D. is considerably exceeded, which is not acceptable in the scientific culture of today.

2.2 Problem

A "good" theory of the origin and evolution of galaxies requires a large, statistically complete sample of galaxies. So far the theory is based on a sample of observations of about hundred galaxies in which not all types of galaxies are well represented. To overcome this problem, the sample of galaxies should be increased with an order of magnitude with carefully selected galaxies. In the conventional way the reduction of HI synthesis observations of hundreds of galaxies will take more than hundred years involving tens of astronomers. Moreover this will result in a sample of non-uniformly reduced galaxies, which are difficult to compare with each other. This problem can be solved by producing a database of uniformly reduced observations of hundreds of galaxies by means of automatic procedures.

2.3 Objective

The objective of this project is to make it possible to produce a more nuanced theory of the origin and evolution of galaxies based on a statistically as complete as possible sample of galaxies. This should be achieved by the realisation of a database with uniformly reduced observations of observations, which are ready for scientific analysis.

2.4 Effect

The effects of this project

These effects have the intention to lead to a quality enhancement of the scientific research.