Related papers: OPTICON and the Virtual Observatory
All sciences, including astronomy, are now entering the era of information abundance. The exponentially increasing volume and complexity of modern data sets promises to transform the scientific practice, but also poses a number of common…
OPTICON, the ICN Optical Infrared Coordination Network for Astronomy, brings together for the first time the operators of all Europe's medium to large optical-infrared telescopes, the largest corresponding data archives, and several user…
The contemporary astronomy is flooded with an exponentially growing petabyte-scaled data volumes produced by powerful ground and space-based instrumentation as well as a product of extensive computer simulations and computations of complex…
A Virtual Observatory (VO) will enable transparent and efficient access, search, retrieval, and visualization of data across multiple data repositories, which are generally heterogeneous and distributed. Aspects of data mining that apply to…
Observatories are complex scientific and technical institutions serving diverse users and purposes. Their telescopes, instruments, software, and human resources engage in interwoven workflows over a broad range of timescales. These…
As a scientific discipline, Astronomy is rather unique. We only have one laboratory, the Universe, and we cannot, of course, change the initial conditions and study the resulting effects. On top of this, acquiring Astronomical data has…
The virtual observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperable data archives, tools and applications that together form an environment in which original astronomical research can be carried out. The VO is opening up new ways of exploiting…
Astronomical datasets are growing in size and diversity, posing severe technical problems. At the same time scientific goals increasingly require the analysis of very large amounts of data, and data from multiple archives. The Virtual…
Operation of the US Virtual Astronomical Observatory shares some issues with modern physical observatories, e.g., intimidating data volumes and rapid technological change, and must also address unique concerns like the lack of direct…
We review the origins of the Virtual Observatory (VO) concept, and the current status of the efforts in this field. VO is the response of the astronomical community to the challenges posed by the modern massive and complex data sets. It is…
After several years of intensive technological development Virtual Observatory resources have reached a level of maturity sufficient for their routine scientific exploitation. The Virtual Observatory is starting to be used by astronomers in…
A virtual observatory will not only enhance many current scientific investigations, but it will also enable entirely new scientific explorations due to both the federation of vast amounts of multiwavelength data and the new archival…
The knowledge discovery potential of the new large astronomical databases is vast. When these are used in conjunction with the rich legacy data archives, the opportunities for scientific discovery multiply rapidly. A Virtual Observatory…
Astronomy is entering a new era as multiple, large area, digital sky surveys are in production. The resulting datasets are truly remarkable in their own right; however, a revolutionary step arises in the aggregation of complimentary…
Here we review some of the main issues related to multi-wavelength source identification and characterization, with particular emphasis on the field of X-ray surveys carried out over the last years. This complex and time-consuming process…
There has been an unprecedented and continuing growth in the volume, quality, and complexity of astronomical data sets over the past few years, mainly through large digital sky surveys. Virtual Observatory (VO) concept represents a…
The Virtual Observatory (VO) will revolutionise the way we do Astronomy by allowing easy access to all astronomical data and by making the handling and analysis of datasets at various locations across the globe much simpler and faster. I…
Access to astronomical data through archives and VO is essential but does not solve all problems. Availability of appropriate software for analyzing the data is often equally important for the efficiency with which a researcher can publish…
The contemporary astronomical instruments have been producing the unprecedented amount of data. The largest part of this "data avalanche" is being produced by deep all-sky surveys yielding terabytes of raw data per night. Such a great data…
In the coming era of data-intensive science, it will be increasingly important to be able to seamlessly move between scientific results, the data analyzed in them, and the processes used to produce them. As observations, derived data…