Alex Szalay, JHU

1
The National Virtual Observatory Status, Plans
Vision

• Alex Szalay, JHU
• and the NVO Team

2
Motivation

• National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey
  recommended NVO as highest priority small
  (lt100M) project
• Several small initiatives recommended by the
  committee span both ground and space. The first
  among themthe National Virtual Observatory
  (NVO)is the committees 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

3
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 2nd 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

4
The NVO Framework Project

• US NVO Framework development project, funded by
  NSF ITR, managed by NSF Astronomy Division, is
  entering the 4th 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)

5
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 RD efforts through AISRP
  grants

6
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 21st Century
• IVOA created VO Event Working Group 11/22/2004
  to support transient event notification protocol
  development

http//ivoa.net
7
Exposure

• NVO Summer School (Sept. 2004, Aspen) trained 40
  students and software developers in VO tools and
  technology
• 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)
• IAU Joint Discussion on Future Large Telescopes
  and the Virtual Observatory (July 2003, Sydney)
• IAU Symposium proposed for 2006 (Prague)

8
Boundary Conditions

• Standards driven by evolving new technologies
• Exchange of rich and structured data (XML)
• DB connectivity, Web Services, Grid computing

• Application to astronomy domain
• Data dictionaries (UCDs)
• Data models
• Protocols
• Registries and resource/service discovery
• Provenance, data quality

Boundary conditions

• Dealing with the astronomy legacy
• FITS data format
• Software systems

9
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

?

10
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

11
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 90-10 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

12
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

13
Science prototypes

• Science demonstrations show capabilities of new
  infrastructure, motivate and guide technical
  developments. For example
• Data discovery, multi-? comparisons
• Search for brown dwarfs
• Galaxy morphologies in clusters
• Globular cluster simulations

14
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

15
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
DataScope
Discover and explore data in the Virtual
Observatory
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,
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.
17
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.
18
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.
19
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.
20
Future VO-enabled science

• NVO applications for 2005-2006 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

21
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
  (http//virtualobservatory.org)
• Project Lite (Boston University), NSF funded
  (http//lite.bu.edu/)
• Planning second EPO workshop for Summer 05

22
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

23
Summary

• 10M committed in US, gt40M 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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