16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting1 The National Virtual Observatory Status, Plans & Vision Alex Szalay, JHU and the NVO Team

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting2 Motivation National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey recommended NVO as highest priority small (<$100M) project “ Several small initiatives recommended by the committee span both ground and space. The first among them—the National Virtual Observatory (NVO)— is the committee’s top priority among the small initiatives. The NVO will provide a “virtual sky” based on the enormous data sets being created now and the even larger ones proposed for the future. It will enable a new mode of research for professional astronomers and will provide to the public an unparalleled opportunity for education and discovery.” —Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium, p. 14

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting3 History 1990s: NASA wavelength-oriented science archive centers; multiple large ground-based digital sky survey projects Apr 1999: Decadal Survey Panel on Theory, Computation, and Data Discovery met in Los Alamos Szalay, Prince, and Alcock coin the name “National Virtual Observatory” Nov 1999: NVO organizational workshop at JHU Feb 2000: 2 nd NVO workshop at NOAO-Tucson Jun 2000: conference at Caltech, “Towards a Virtual Observatory” Jun 2000: ad hoc steering committee formed Feb 2001: AASC/NAS report “Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium” released Apr 2001: Proposal submitted to NSF ITR program, 17 collaborating organizations, led by A. Szalay (JHU) Sep 2001: NSF announces proposal selection Jan 2003: First NVO science prototypes shown at Seattle AAS Jan 2005: First NVO applications released

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting4 The NVO Framework Project US NVO Framework development project, funded by NSF ITR, managed by NSF Astronomy Division, is entering the 4 th year of a 5-year project Funding is $10M+ over the 5 years 17 organizations (astro, CS, IT) involved –JHU (PI Alex Szalay), STScI, Caltech (Astro, IPAC, CACR), HEASARC, SAO, NRAO, NOAO, NCSA, SDSC, FNAL, USNO... Discussions/collaboration being extended to Gemini Science Archive (Aspin), LSST (Axelrod, Kantor), Keck (Conrad), PANSTARRS (Heasley)

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting5 Community and agency support External Advisory Committee has issued very positive reports (S. Wolff, J. Huchra, R. Kennicutt, R. Blandford, M. Haynes, T. Hey, C. Lagoze, S. Karin, P. Messina, E. Ostriker) Science Steering Committee advises on priorities and strategies for community up-take (G. Djorgovski, P. Pinto, M. Donahue, J. Ulvestad, F. Hill, B. Wilkes) NSF support is strong; 100% renewal funding, carry- forward, and augmentations for international collaboration and Summer School –National facilities providing more on-line archives and increasing VO compatibility NASA co-sponsored NVO Summer School, supports VO integration efforts at NASA data centers and various VO- related R&D efforts through AISRP grants

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting6 International collaboration NVO is co-founder of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance IVOA now has 15 member projects Adopted a standards process based on W3C Forum for discussion and sharing of experience IVOA and open archives endorsed by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Global Science Forum report on “The Management, Storage, and Utilization of Astronomical Data in the 21 st Century”“The Management, Storage, and Utilization of Astronomical Data in the 21 st Century” IVOA created “VO Event” Working Group 11/22/2004 to support transient event notification protocol development

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting7 Exposure NVO Summer School (Sept. 2004, Aspen) trained 40 students and software developers in VO tools and technologyNVO Summer School Special Session at this AAS meeting: Astronomical Research with the Virtual Observatory; includes several papers based on Summer School projects (environments of radio galaxies, starburst galaxies)Astronomical Research with the Virtual Observatory IAU Joint Discussion on Future Large Telescopes and the Virtual Observatory (July 2003, Sydney)IAU Joint Discussion on Future Large Telescopes and the Virtual IAU Symposium proposed for 2006 (Prague)

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting8 Dealing with the astronomy legacy u FITS data format u Software systems Standards driven by evolving new technologies u Exchange of rich and structured data (XML…) u DB connectivity, Web Services, Grid computing Boundary Conditions Application to astronomy domain –Data dictionaries (UCDs) –Data models –Protocols –Registries and resource/service discovery –Provenance, data quality Boundary conditions

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting9 The Virtual Observatory is… International standards to share complex data Modular toolkit to work with distributed data A simple environment to publish data to An essential part of the astronomers’ toolkit World-wide access to astronomy archives Resource for education and public outreach

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting10 The Virtual Observatory is not… A replacement for building new telescopes and instruments A centralized repository for all astronomy data A data quality enforcement organization

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting11 NVO: How Will It Work? Do not build ‘everything for everybody’ Define commonly used ‘core’ services Build higher level apps/portals on top Use the rule: –Define the standards and interfaces –Build the framework –Build the 10% of services that are used by 90% –Provide the tools and documentation -- users will build the custom applications they need

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting12 NVO – from research to services First two years spent on –Team building –Defining the standards –Building prototypes and pilot studies –Get feedback from astronomy SW community Third year –Define core applications Prototypes to services –Build them –Document them

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting13 Science prototypes Science demonstrations show capabilities of new infrastructure, motivate and guide technical developments. For example: –Data discovery, multi-λ comparisons –Search for brown dwarfs –Galaxy morphologies in clusters –Globular cluster simulations

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting14 First Light Jan 2005: the first real applications Taking some of the most common tasks –Discovery and data access –Analysis and exploration –Visualization Immediate future: –engage the whole astronomy community

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting15 NVO Registry Portal Find source catalogs, image archives, and other astronomical resources registered with the NVO A Registry is a distributed database of Virtual Observatory resources: primarily access services for catalog, image, and spectral data, but also descriptions of organizations and data collections. There are several coordinated registry implementations that share information by harvesting each other's resources. This registry is at STScI in Baltimore, MD. Searches for resources can be done by keyword, or advanced queries can be expressed in the SQL language. The registry is open for humans through web forms, or machines through SOAP web services.

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting16 DataScope Using the NVO DataScope scientists can discover and explore hundreds of data resources available in the Virtual Observatory. DataScope uses the VO registry and VO access protocols to link to archives and catalogs around the world. Users can immediately discover what is known about a given region of the sky: they can view survey images from the radio through the X-ray, explore archived observations from multiple archives, find recent articles describing analysis of data in the region, Discover and explore data in the Virtual Observatory find known interesting or peculiar objects and survey datasets that cover the region. A summary page provides a quick précis of all of the available data. Users can download images and tables for further analysis on their local machines, or they can go directly to a growing set of VO enabled analysis tools, including Aladin, OASIS, VOPlot and VOStat.

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting17 OpenSkyQuery Cross-match your data with numerous catalogs OpenSkyQuery allows you to cross-match astronomical catalogs and select subsets of catalogs with a general and powerful query language. You can also import a personal catalog of objects and cross-match it against selected databases.

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting18 Spectrum Services Search, plot, and retrieve SDSS, 2dF, and other spectra The Spectrum Services web site is dedicated to spectrum related VO services. On this site you will find tools and tutorials on how to access close to 500,000 spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR1) and the 2 degree Field redshift survey (2dFGRS). The services are open to everyone to publish their own spectra in the same framework. Reading the tutorials on XML Web Services, you can learn how to integrate the 45 GB spectrum and passband database with your programs with few lines of code.

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting19 Web Enabled Source Identification with Cross-Matching (WESIX) Upload images to SExtractor and cross-correlate the objects found with selected survey catalogs. This NVO service does source extraction and cross- matching for any astrometric FITS image. The user uploads a FITS image, and the remote service runs the SExtractor software for source extraction. The resulting catalog can be cross-matched with any of several major surveys, and the results returned as a VOTable. The web page also allows use of Aladin or VOPlot to visualize results.

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting20 Future VO-enabled science NVO applications for TBD in consultation with Science Steering Committee –Dynamic time series analysis, period fitting –“VO-Google” –Fast data inventory service –Flux-recovery service –Image registration and subtraction services –VO integration with legacy software systems (web service interfaces, data access) –Data mining and data federation on increasingly large, distributed databases

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting21 Education and Outreach NVO recognized as excellent vehicle for education and public outreach NVO EPO Coordinator (C. Christian) developing partnerships –Virtual Cosmos portal (UC Berkeley, STScI, NOAO, ESO), NASA AISRP funded –Adler Planetarium CyberSpace –Learning Technologies WorldWind, NASA Ames –NVO/SDSS Pre-College Curriculum Support ( –Project Lite (Boston University), NSF funded ( Planning second EPO workshop for Summer 05

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting22 Ear to the ground NSF and NASA working to create joint program; draft RFP could be available by next spring Build community support from the ground up –Demonstrations –Software releases –Summer School –EPO partnerships

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting23 Summary $10M+ committed in US, >$40M worldwide, to VO development Active international community is working and meeting regularly to establish the VO Major archives and catalogs available through the VO and more coming First public tools and applications now available for community use Community engagement under way First research papers utilizing the VO beginning to appear

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