Hyperatlas: A New Framework for Image Federation

Hyperatlas is an open standard intended to facilitate the large-scale federation of image-based data. The subject of hyperatlas is the space of sphere-to-plane projection mappings (the FITS-WCS information), and the standard consists of coherent collections of these on which data can be resampled and thereby federated with other image data. We hope for a distributed effort that will produce a multi-faceted image atlas of the sky, made by federating many different surveys at different wavelengths and different times. We expect that hyperatlas-compliant imagery will be published and discovered through an International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) registry, and that grid-based services will emerge for the required resampling and mosaicking.