About AVM Toolkit

AVM Toolkit is a web-based solution for metadata management for images utilizing the Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard. Key functionality includes:

• Image management
  • Uploading (single or multiple)
  • Downloading tagged images
  • Importing existing AVM metadata on upload
  • Full AVM editing and synchronization
• Template management
  • Create and edit templates
  • Upload sidecar XMP file as template
  • Import AVM metadata from image as template
  • Apply templates to single or multiple images
• Image Feeds
  • Generate RSS feed of tagged images (can be used to publish to AstroPix)
  • Choose which subset of images in an account are published to feed

To use the AVM Toolkit you need to create an account linked to an email address. The account also includes a Publisher ID though that is not being used currently (and can be changed under your account settings).

Once you have logged in, all of your assets are found under the Images and Templates tabs.

AVM Documentation

Detailed information about the AVM tags can be found in this Google Sheet:

AVM Tagging Reference (16 Feb 2012)

A listing of standardized terms for referencing telescopes and instruments are available here:

Facility/Instrument Vocabulary

More information about AVM can be found here:

About AstroPix

Site Info

AVM Toolkit is a product of the Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project (VAMP). VAMP is affiliated with IAU Commission 55, "Communicating Astronomy with the Public."

The site is managed by the IPAC Communcations and Education (ICE) team. 

The site is built on a Ruby on Rails framework, and employs a version of ExifTool for reading/writing metadata. 

The principle architects/developers of the site are Jacob Llamas, Casey Rosenthal, and Alan Mulhall. The lead producer is Robert Hurt.