Mark Taylor

I am a computer programmer working in the Astrophysics group, writing and supporting software for use in the UK astronomy community and beyond. Modern astronomy produces huge amounts of data, both direct images of the sky from telescopes operating at a range of frequencies and the results of processing these images in various ways. Sophisticated software is required to extract scientific results from these data. My recent work, which includes writing the widely-used graphical tool TOPCAT (see screenshot below), has focussed on processing catalogues of astronomical objects (galaxies and stars), particularly in the context of the emerging Virtual Observatory, the worldwide collection of interoperating astronomical data archives and tools.