Grid-Based Galaxy Morphology Analysis for the National Virtual Observatory

As part of the development of the National Virtual Observatory (NVO), a Data Grid for astronomy, we have developed a prototype science application to explore the dynamical history of galaxy clusters by analyzing the galaxies' morphologies. The purpose of the prototype is to investigate how Grid-based technologies can be used to provide specialized computational services within the NVO environment. In this paper we focus on the key enabling technology components, particularly Chimera and Pegasus which are used to create and manage the computational workflow that must be present to deal with the challenging application requirements. We illustrate how the components interplay with each other and can be driven from a special purpose application portal.