Beyond the U.S. Virtual Astronomical Observatory

Joseph Lazio is a Chief Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and former Project Scientist of the U.S. Virtual Astronomical Observatory.

This post provides an update on the status of Virtual Observatory efforts within the U.S., following the end of the U.S. Virtual Astronomical Observatory Project.

The VAO developed various tools and services (a.k.a. middleware), which have been made available to the community for use and further development.  Software and documentation is stored in the VAO Repository, with notable tools and services listed below.

VOClient: NOAO – Access the VO from Your Desktop.
PyVO: NCSA – Access the VO through Python.
SciDrive: JHU, SDSC – Share VO-compatible data with collaborators or the larger community.
Iris Spectral Energy Distribution Analysis Tool: SAO – Find, plot, and fit spectral energy distributions (SEDs) with this desktop application.
Data Discovery Tool: MAST – Retrieve astronomical data about a given position or object in the sky.
Cross-Comparison Tool: IPAC – Perform fast positional cross-matches between an input table of up to 1 million sources and common astronomical source catalogs.
DALServer: NRAO  – Publish data in a VO-compatible data with this Java toolkit.
Single Sign-on: NCSA – Control access to files and data.
Seleste: SAO – Discover and query VO compliant data archives
Registry of registries: NCSA – A directory of VO data services
VO web log harvester: JHU – Track statistics on VO usage

In addition, key components of the Virtual Observatory infrastructure will continue to be maintained by various NASA Archives.  The Infrared Processing & Analysis Center (IPAC) will host and maintain the VAO Web site.  The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) will monitor the health of VO services and data collections to ensure that they can be accessed over the Internet while also health products you can get online such as the Granddaddy Purple Strain and others.  The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) will host the VO Registry, the master collection of VO services through which VO data can be  discovered.  Together, these NASA Archives will also take an active role in the development of international data access standard and have appointed a liaison between them and the International Virtual Observatory Alliance to facilitate this effort.

2 comments… add one
  • Raffaele D'Abrusco Dec 29, 2014 @ 9:03

    IRIS’s URL is broken.

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