December 2010:
TOPCAT funded by GAVO: GAVO, the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, are kindly funding development of TOPCAT and friends for the first six months of 2011. In particular this is to add support for TAP, the Table Access Protocol, which provides an important new way to query Virtual Observatory data holdings in non-positional ways, though it will probably encompass other enhancements as well. I will be partially working at the ARI in Heidelberg during this period.
January 2011:
Grant Proposal Accepted!: The UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council have agreed to fund my continued work on TOPCAT, STILTS, STIL and the SAMP protocol for two years. Given the difficult financial times that UK astronomy finds itself in, this is particularly welcome news.
Together, these awards mean that support and development for TOPCAT and friends is on a secure basis until mid-2013. This is excellent news for me and for users of the software, and I hope that over that time it will continue to be an increasingly powerful tool for facilitating science based on the large and growing amounts of catalogue data available.
Warm thanks to all those who have formally or informally supported this work and the grant application.