Virtual Observatory  C urrent trends and development

1. Xiaowei Liu Peking University University College London Virtual Observatory Current trends and development

2. Topics • (Practical) Efforts towards a VO (sci., tech.) • European activities and reaction to the concept of VOs • SRM - conferences on VOs • Data-mining (a common problem)

3. Archive Research proposals • Legacy Archive Research proposals (cycle 11) • The project should perform a homogeneous analysis of a well-defined subset of data in the HST Archive. • The main goal should be to provide a homogeneous set of calibrated data and/or ancillary data products (catalogs, software tools, web interfaces etc.) to the scientific community. • The results of the project should enable a variety of new and important types of scientific investigations.

5. Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) ISO carried out 26000 observations during its 28 months lifetime.

6. First look Whole archive downloaded twice!

7. ESO VLT Approaching space-borne obs. mode: • Standardisation of data taking • Service observations • P2PP - Observation blocks

9. Trends and conclusions • Large data set from space borne mission, • Standardisation of ground-based observations and systematically data archiving  Data-mining becomes a very important aspect of research  New sciences possible  VOs

10. National Virtual Observatory Graphics from US NVO project

11. Astrovirtel An European Project

12. Approved Astrovirtel proposals

13. First significant discovery based on Astrovirtel First discovered by Millis R., Elliot J. L., Wasserman L H., NOAO PR01-10, 2 July 2001, with an estimated R = 960 km. Latest estimate using Astrovirtel yields: d = 43 AU, R = 1200 km (Hahn G, et al., ESO PR 23 Aug. 2001)

14. Astrophysical Virtual Observatory • Proposal submitted to EC in February 2001 • Consortium: ESO, ESA/ST-ECF, CDS Strassbourg, terapix IAP Paris, Astrogrid UK, Jodrell Bank • Activities - AVO science - Archive interoperability - Technological infrastructure • Phase A - Realistic test bed for GRID-type distributed infrastructures - Address and verify against existing archive for: Quality and availability of calib. pipelines & calib. data Characterisation of the PSF or seeing over the filed of the images Limiting magnitudes and surface brightness Photometrical conditions, astrometry characterisation - Analysis tools for large distributed data set - Policy: Open on-line facility or Controlled infrastructure with dedicated funds or specialised assistance, selection via standard "Call for proposals" - Phase B design AVO Science Working Group Piero Benvenuti (ST-ECF) Email: Piero.Benvenuti@eso.org Deadline: September 21st 2001

15. UK PPARC -Long Term Science Review

18. AstroGrid project developed during LTSR proposal to PPARC October 2000 three year project one year Phase A study community consultation science requirements analysis benchmark tests pilot database federations we need use-cases.... NAM 2001 Andy Lawrence Cambridge

19. Phase B - preliminary uniform AstroGrid interface data-mining machines connected in grid tool for simultaneous browsing plus advanced visualisation, links to spectra etc. tools for advanced database analysis advanced querying, mixture fitting, statistical manipulations etc. tools for on-line data analysis statistics, model fitting system for uploading code NAM 2001 Andy Lawrence Cambridge

20. Conferences on Virtual Observatories • VOs of the Future (SRM for NVO) (Caltech, Pasadena, June 13 - 16, 2000) - Explore the possibilities for new astronomy with large digital sky surveys - Define the technical needs and the mandate for the future NVO (GVO) Overviews of existing efforts; New science with a VO; Hardware & network; Statistics & data mining; Data format & visualization, archive interoperability; Education & public outreach • Mining the Sky(MPA/ESO/MPE Garching, German, July 31 - August 4, 2000) - Numerical and statistical analysis of large astronomical datasets - Large-scale computer simulations - Data mining • Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems X (SAO, Boston, November 12-15, 2000) - Astronomy technologies; Sky surveys; Public outreach - Software development history, methodologies & technologies - Science data pipelines; IRAF, DS9, AIPS++, FITS, IDL, Linux, Cobra

21. Conferences on Virtual Observatories • Theoretical Data in Virtual Observatories (Tucson, Mar. 20-21, 2001) • New Astrophysics and Cosmology with a Virtual Observatory Science with Wide-Field Survey Telescopes (Aspen Center for Physics, May 27-June 10, 2001) • Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy III (Penn State, July 18-21, 2001) • SPIE 46th Ann. Meeting, Conf. 4477 on Astron. Data Analysis (San Diego, July 29-August 3, 2001) - Data Mining: Sky Survey Data Analysis, Detection, Classification - Data Modeling, Background Estimation, Cosmic Ray Removal, ... - Data Analysis and Statistical Methods - Image Compression, Databases, Information Retrieval,... - Virtual Observatory, Computational Grids - Autonomous Agents, Distributed Computing Environments,...

22. Conferences on Virtual Observatories • Joint European and National Astronomical Meeting Joint Discussion 2: Virtual Observatory (Munich, September 10-15, 2001) - What is a virtual observatory? - Why do we need a virtual observatory? - Virtual Observatory activities in Europe, JAPAN, and USA - Oral and Poster Contributions - General Discussion

27. Virtual Observatories - New Opportunity, New Challenge • The ever-increasing amount of high-quality scientific data stored in various astronomical archives is becoming a `source' that can be utilised by research teams in an equivalent fashion to observing with a `physical' telescope at a ground or space-based observatory • "Observatory": A connected and interoperating set of astron. archives • "Telescopes": Network of archives • "Instruments": Suite of software tools to query and analyse the data • Case for a Chinese National Virtual Observatory • Unavoidable • Observations driven and oriented, more balanced researches • Fast track, Cost-effective • SRM or SWG