[gnuastro-devel] [task #14495] Grant proposal for IAU Office of Astronomy for developement

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?14495>

                 Summary: Grant proposal for IAU Office of Astronomy for
developement
                 Project: GNU Astronomy Utilities
            Submitted by: makhlaghi
            Submitted on: Fri 28 Apr 2017 08:02:50 PM CEST
         Should Start On: Fri 28 Apr 2017 12:00:00 AM CEST
   Should be Finished on: Fri 28 Apr 2017 12:00:00 AM CEST
                Category: All Gnuastro
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Enhancement
                  Status: In Progress
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

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Details:

Today I saw <https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann17016/> that
this year's call for proposals to the International Astronomical Union (IAU)
office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) is now open.

Gnuastro was not defined to be purely a tool for research, but as discussed in
the "Science and its tools"
<https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Science-and-its-tools.html>
section of the manual's introduction, its primary purpose is social/technical
development (same as GNU in general): giving people interested in Astronomy
the knowledge/power/tools to develop their own science/tools and express their
creativity. 

This is also visible from the extent and completeness of the manual: how it
describes everything (from the command-line environment, to the mathematics
and even history of the concepts) for someone with no background. Its codes
are also heavily commented and particularly formatted for an early user to
read easily.

Given the vast range of astronomical datasets that are freely available today,
and the public interest astronomy enjoys. It is possible to teach high-school
students or undergraduates (for example) who are interested in astronomy a
good level of the command-line environment, programming, and even statistical
analysis using Gnuastro. They will learn the command-line and even programming
for some intresting processing (for example playing/reducing HST images), but
this experience that they gain during the process will be very useful for them
in what ever job they ultimately choose to pursue (if they don't continue in
astronomy). 

Since Gnuastro is purely written in C and has a robust command-line user
interface (thanks to GNU C Library's Argp), it is arguably the best tool for
this job. Using it doesn't need any particular high-level language (like
Python that is in fashion today, or any other high-level language that will
supercede it in 5-10 years). So what people learn when learning Gnuastro is
applicable in a very wide range of applications and will be useful for them as
long as the current popular operating systems (all written in C) are
available.

This is particularly more relevant to young people in developing countries:
they should be given the low-level tools to create their own paths rather than
some high-level language/tool that will always keep them unable to make any
significant change and dependent on more advanced countries for the
low-level/fundamental expertise and knowledge.

Finally, since the copyright of Gnuastro is owned by GNU, we can ensure that
it will always be free and independent of any particular astronomical
institution/project.

So I thought of sharing these initial thoughts with you and see if you have
any ideas/suggestions on the feasability of defining an IAU OAD project to
help Gnuastro be more useful for social development ;-).




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