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The Virtual Observatory

Paolo Padovani

Head, Virtual Observatory Project Office, ESO

EURO-VO AIDA Project Scientist

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The way Astronomy works

• Telescopes (ground- and space-based, covering the full electromagnetic spectrum) Observatories• Instruments (telescope/band dependent) Observatories/Consortia

• Publications Journals

• Data curation (metadata + tables & catalogues) Data curators

• Data analysis software (instrument dependent) Observatories/Consortia/Researchers

• Active Archives Observatories/Agencies

• … and Public Outreach Observatories/Agencies

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Information Avalanche

• Huge surveys:100 million sources at < 3000 sources per night > 100 years to identify them

• Ever fainter sources routinely surpassing the identification limits of 8 - 10m telescopes [R ≈ 25]

• Huge data collections: download and data analysis on desktop problematic/impossible. Example: downloading Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR6 data: images (10 Terabytes) ~ 3 months at 10 Mbps (ESO’s

speed) catalogues (2 Terabytes) ~ 3 weeks on DVDs ~ 2,100 of them

• And data analysis?? (similar size for MACHO, 2MASS etc …)

R ~ 25.5, VLT/FORS2, texp ~ 2.5 hrs (Szokoly et al. 2004)

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Instruments

Data Headers

Telescopecontrol

Logs

Observatories

Outreach Products

Calibrations

Raw Data

Processed Data

AnalysisData

Products

Catalogues

Software

Computing

Publications

Papers

TablesFigurescourtesy of

P. Quinn

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The Virtual Observatory

• The Virtual Observatory (VO) is an innovative, still evolving, system to: take advantage of astronomical data explosion allow astronomers to interrogate multiple data centres in a seamless and transparent way and to utilize at best astronomical data permit remote computing and data analysis foster new science

• Web: all documents inside PC; VO: all astronomical databases inside PC • VO democratization of astronomy!• All of the above requires the various players to speak the same language VO standards and protocols defined and adopted within the IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance), which includes 16 projects world-wide

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16

ChinaIndia

Canada

Spain

Italy

Armenia

FranceGermany

Hungary

Japan

Korea

USA

Russia

UK

Australia Europe

(soon to be 17 with Brazil)

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The European View: the EURO-VO http://www.euro-vo.org

• Successor to the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO), which was a 5 M€, Phase A study (2001 - 2004/5) on the scientific requirements and technology for building the VO in Europe, 50% funded by European Community (Fifth Framework Programme [FP5])• Includes 8 partners: ESO, European Space Agency (ESA), plus six national nodes: INAF (Italy), INSU (France), INTA (Spain), NOVA (Netherlands), PPARC (UK), and RDS (Germany)• Has three components: Data Centre Alliance, Technology Centre, Facility Centre• Partly funded by the EC but substantial (> 50%) partner support

An alliance of European data centres who will populate the EURO-VO with data, provide the physical storage and computational fabric and who will publish data, metadata and services to the EURO-VO using VO technologies

A distributed organization that coordinates a set of research and development projects on the advancement of VO technology, systems and tools in response to scientific and community requirements

An operational organization, that provides the EURO-VO with a persistent, centralized registry for resources, standards and certification mechanisms as well as community support for VO technology take-up and scientific programs. EURO-VO’s “public face”

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The EURO-VO Project: AIDA

• The “Astronomical Infrastructure for Data Access (AIDA)” project is funded by the EC FP7 through the Infrastructure call INFRA-2007-1.2.1 “Scientific Digital Repositories”• AIDA has the same partners as the EURO-VO• Project started on Feb. 1, 2008, which ensures continuation of European-wide VO activities at least until mid-2010• AIDA is a combination of DCA, VOTC, and FC activities• AIDA aims at unifying the digital data collection of European astronomy, integrating their access mechanisms with evolving e-technologies and enhancing the science extracted from these data-sets• One of AIDA’s main goals is to support the European astronomical community in their exploitation of astronomical data through VO tools

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AIDA Research Initiatives

• Call for Proposals issued April 2008 by EURO-VO project, through the ESO/ESA managed Facility Centre

• Aim: scientific and technical support to teams interested in carrying out astronomical projects utilising VO tools; support will last 1 yr (until Sep. 15) with a goal of a refereed publication

• Seven proposals received, three projects selected by EURO-VO Science Advisory Committee and EURO-VO project:

Is a galaxy’s disk scale-length universal? (PI Fathi [Sweden]; CDS/Astrogrid)

Spectral energy distributions of 2XMM-selected AGN (PI Gil-Merino [Spain]; SVO)

AGN feedback and quenching of star formation: a multiwavelength approach (PI Lobo [Portugal]; ESO)

• Next call due by June

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AIDA Workshops

• Multi-wavelength Astronomy and the VO Community Workshop, ESAC, Madrid, Dec. 1 - 3, 2008 (http://esavo.esa.int/MultiwavelengthVOWorkshopDec2008/)

• Goals:– Identify needs and challenges multi-wavelength astronomy will be facing

in the coming years– Identify how the VO can meet them – Bring together experts in multi-wavelength astronomy and VO scientists

and engineers– Overall rationale: scientific needs to drive the technological development;

vital to get input from the astronomical community• Topics: multi-wavelength Astronomy, VO tools and standards, Surveys,

“Putting it all together” - recent science using the VO• Next Community Workshop by the end of the year (topic TBD)

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Science and the Virtual Observatory

The ultimate goal of the VO is to facilitate the work of astronomers and foster new science.

This is done directly by: • allowing easier/better access to (ever

larger amounts of) data • providing new/improved research tools (see

http://www.euro-vo.org/pub/fc/software.html)And indirectly by: • motivating data centres to:

1. agree on common standards (esp. for information exchange)

2. provide homogeneous meta-data (data about data) and quality flags

3. produce and/or collect science-ready dataIndirect ways not easily linkable to the VO!

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The VO and science-ready data

• Astronomical research nowadays needs a variety of multi-wavelength data

• Access to individual archives is time-consuming and not easy: different astronomical archives have widely different access/search interfaces and standards/conventions

• Data reduction requires widely specialized, complex analysis software for various bands (radio, IR, optical, X-ray, etc.)

• Astronomers need and want reduced data!• The VO provides access to science-ready

data. But only if: they exist! the data provider has gone through the

(often small) effort of “publishing them” to the VO (= following VO standards)

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A selection of VO-based astronomical papers

• List of VO-based papers at http://www.euro-vo.org/pub/fc/papers.html• Papers which make “heavy” use of VO tools and services• Lower limit to papers which are VO-related• Selected (almost randomly) recent results to show diversity of problems which

can be tackled with VO tools:• Using VO tools to investigate distant radio starburst hosting obscured AGN

in the HDF(N) region, Richards et al., A&A, 472, 805 (2007)• Albus 1: a very bright White Dwarf candidate, Caballero & Solano, ApJ,

665, L151 (2007) • Flare productivity of newly-emerged paired and isolated solar active

regions, Dalla, Fletcher, & Walton, A&A, 468, 1103 (2007)• Radio-loud Narrow-Line Type 1 Quasars, Komossa et al., AJ, 132, 531

(2006)• Luminous AGB stars in nearby galaxies. A study using VO tools, Tsalmantza

et al., A&A, 447, 89 (2006)

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AIDA “Hands-on” Workshop

• Goal: expose (young) European astronomers to VO tools and services so that they can use them efficiently for their own research

• Methods:– lecture and tutor the participants on the usage of such tools– give real life examples of scientific applications (some selected from

those submitted by participants)– hands-on exercises

• Participants: 40 students (out of ~ 75 applicants) + ~ 15 tutors• Hope:

– participants become proficient in using VO tools for their research– participants act as “catalysts” in their home institutions, exposing also

their more senior colleagues to the VO • Likely to be repeated at the national level by some Euro-VO partners (e.g.,

VO-France, ESO “VO day”)

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Workshop Programme

• Today: – introduction to VO tools in a series of presentations– work-groups set-up

• Tuesday and Wednesday:– software check– hands-on work:

some tools are still “shaky”, so please be patient! use cases might seem easy to do now, but have required quite

some work on the tutors’ side VO science still requires astrophysical judgement!

• Thursday:– group presentations– feedback and discussion

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Workshop Practicalities

• Workgroups rooms: Extragalactic 1: Council Room Extragalactic 2: Auditorium Galactic 1: Room 231 Galactic 2: Room 232

• Hotels: hopefully all set by now• Transportation: U6 (see school Web page)• Lunches: provided at ESO (Thursday excluded)• Workshop dinner on Tuesday at the Augustiner in Munich (see

school Web page)• Forms for travel reimbursement: see Stella

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… and now on with the workshop!