Talk given by Claudio Mendoza at the VAMDC Annual Meeting, University of Vienna, Austria, 24 February 2012.

1. Atomic data user-producer community
developments: the AstroAtom blog
Claudio Mendoza (IVIC, CeCalCULA)
Efrain Gatuzz (IVIC)
Valentina Luridiana (IAC, Spain)
Manuel Bautista (WSU, USA)
VAMDC Annual Meeting
Vienna University, Vienna
21/02/12

2. AstroAtom was proposed by the
atomic user-producer community
Initiative proposed at the “Workshop on
uncertainties in atomic data and how they
propagate in chemical abundances”, IAC,
Tenerife, Spain (October 2010)
AstroAtom is supported by VAMDC as from
September 2011
Recommend Reinventing Discovery: the New
Era of Network Science, Michael Nielsen (2011)

3. AstroAtom intends to promote data
community interactions
The main idea behind AstroAtom is to
promote scientific discussion before formal
publication
Research Conference Preprint Paper
AstroAtom

4. Since January 2011, AstroAtom
has published more than 80 posts
Categories Number of posts
Atomic data applications 55
Atomic data production 33
Atomic data bases 10
People 3

5. Number of monthly visits
Month

6. Number of weekly visits
Week number

7. Average daily visits
Month

8. Most AstroAtom visits come from
Google
Web site Number of entries
google.com 643
vamdc.eu 153
arxiv.org 57
vamdc.org 35
cecalc.ula.ve 19

9. Searches arrive at AstroAtom
looking for celebrity info
Search Number of
visits
Feynman 69
astroatom 59
grid computing 32
ken dere solar 30
dielectronic recombination 17
star spectroscopy analysis 10
atomic databases 10

10. There seems to be a lot of interest
in laboratory astrophysics

11. Recommendations
AstroAtom has been well received by the atomic
data user-producer community
We plan to contract a consulting firm to boost
AstroAtom performance
We encourage VAMDC to extend blogs to other
communities:
 AstroMol
 AstroChem
 AstroLab
 VAMDC blog of blogs