I ofter hear disparaging remarks about the virtual observatory (VO), or lack thereof, but things are definitely happening!
The scientific goal of the VO is to use a uniform set of queries enable astronomers to discover data sets worldwide and aggregate them into new data products and to perform new scientific analyses. The VO does this by developing standards and protocols to support common queries to disparate and inhomogenous data sets distributed across the globe, and by developing innovative ways of efficiently querying very large data sets.
Astronomy Computing has a nice article today briefly describing how three big (really big) projects are planning to manage and serve their data. It’s nice to see what the “VO” actually means in practical terms.
New Astronomy Projects Take Up The Virtual Observatory | Astronomy Computing Today.