16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting1 The National Virtual Observatory Status, Plans & Vision Alex Szalay, JHU...

16 Feb, 2005AAAC meeting 1

The National Virtual ObservatoryStatus, Plans & Vision

Alex Szalay, JHUand the NVO Team


Motivation

• National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey recommended NVO as highest priority small (<$100M) project

“ Several small initiatives recommended by the committee span both ground and space. The first among them—the National Virtual Observatory (NVO)—is the committee’s top priority among the small initiatives. The NVO will provide a “virtual sky” based on the enormous data sets being created now and the even larger ones proposed for the future. It will enable a new mode of research for professional astronomers and will provide to the public an unparalleled opportunity for education and discovery.”

—Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium, p. 14


History• 1990s: NASA wavelength-oriented science archive centers;

multiple large ground-based digital sky survey projects• Apr 1999: Decadal Survey Panel on Theory, Computation, and

Data Discovery met in Los Alamos Szalay, Prince, and Alcock coin the name “National Virtual Observatory”

• Nov 1999: NVO organizational workshop at JHU• Feb 2000: 2nd NVO workshop at NOAO-Tucson• Jun 2000: conference at Caltech, “Towards a Virtual Observatory”• Jun 2000: ad hoc steering committee formed• Feb 2001: AASC/NAS report “Astronomy and Astrophysics in the

New Millennium” released• Apr 2001: Proposal submitted to NSF ITR program, 17 collaborating

organizations, led by A. Szalay (JHU)• Sep 2001: NSF announces proposal selection• Jan 2003: First NVO science prototypes shown at Seattle AAS• Jan 2005: First NVO applications released


The NVO Framework Project

• US NVO Framework development project, funded by NSF ITR, managed by NSF Astronomy Division, is entering the 4th year of a 5-year project

• Funding is $10M+ over the 5 years• 17 organizations (astro, CS, IT) involved

– JHU (PI Alex Szalay), STScI, Caltech (Astro, IPAC, CACR), HEASARC, SAO, NRAO, NOAO, NCSA, SDSC, FNAL, USNO...

• Discussions/collaboration being extended to Gemini Science Archive (Aspin), LSST (Axelrod, Kantor), Keck (Conrad), PANSTARRS (Heasley)


Community and agency support

• External Advisory Committee has issued very positive reports (S. Wolff, J. Huchra, R. Kennicutt, R. Blandford, M. Haynes, T. Hey, C. Lagoze, S. Karin, P. Messina, E. Ostriker)

• Science Steering Committee advises on priorities and strategies for community up-take (G. Djorgovski, P. Pinto, M. Donahue, J. Ulvestad, F. Hill, B. Wilkes)

• NSF support is strong; 100% renewal funding, carry-forward, and augmentations for international collaboration and Summer School– National facilities providing more on-line archives and

increasing VO compatibility• NASA co-sponsored NVO Summer School, supports VO

integration efforts at NASA data centers and various VO-related R&D efforts through AISRP grants


International collaboration

• NVO is co-founder of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance

• IVOA now has 15 member projects• Adopted a standards process based on W3C• Forum for discussion and sharing of experience• IVOA and open archives endorsed by OECD

(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Global Science Forum report on “The Management, Storage, and Utilization of Astronomical Data in the 21st Century”

• IVOA created “VO Event” Working Group 11/22/2004 to support transient event notification protocol development

http://ivoa.net

http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/OECDWhitePaper.html




http://ivoa.net/

http://ivoa.net/

http://ivoa.net/


Exposure

• NVO Summer School (Sept. 2004, Aspen) trained 40 students and software developers in VO tools and technology

• Special Session at this AAS meeting: Astronomical Research with the Virtual Observatory; includes several papers based on Summer School projects (environments of radio galaxies, starburst galaxies)

• IAU Joint Discussion on Future Large Telescopes and the Virtual Observatory (July 2003, Sydney)

• IAU Symposium proposed for 2006 (Prague)

http://us-vo.org/summer-school/proceedings/index.cfm

http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v36n5/aas205/S1300.htm

http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v36n5/aas205/S1300.htm

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/misc/jd_08.htm

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/misc/jd_08.htm


Dealing with the astronomy legacyFITS data formatSoftware systems

Standards driven by evolving new technologiesExchange of rich and structured data (XML…)DB connectivity, Web Services, Grid computing

Boundary Conditions

Application to astronomy domain– Data dictionaries (UCDs)– Data models– Protocols– Registries and resource/service discovery– Provenance, data quality

Boundary conditions


The Virtual Observatory is…

• International standards to share complex data

• Modular toolkit to work with distributed data

• A simple environment to publish data to

• An essential part of the astronomers’ toolkit

• World-wide access to astronomy archives

• Resource for education and public outreach


The Virtual Observatory is not…

• A replacement for building new telescopes and instruments

• A centralized repository for all astronomy data• A data quality enforcement organization


NVO: How Will It Work?

• Do not build ‘everything for everybody’• Define commonly used ‘core’ services• Build higher level apps/portals on top• Use the 90-10 rule:

– Define the standards and interfaces– Build the framework– Build the 10% of services that are used by

90%– Provide the tools and documentation --

users will build the custom applications they need


NVO – from research to services

• First two years spent on – Team building– Defining the standards– Building prototypes and pilot studies– Get feedback from astronomy SW

community

• Third year– Define core applications

• Prototypes to services

– Build them– Document them


Science prototypes

• Science demonstrations show capabilities of new infrastructure, motivate and guide technical developments. For example:– Data discovery, multi-λ comparisons– Search for brown dwarfs– Galaxy morphologies in clusters– Globular cluster simulations


First Light

• Jan 2005: the first real applications• Taking some of the most common tasks

– Discovery and data access– Analysis and exploration– Visualization

• Immediate future: – engage the whole astronomy community


NVO Registry Portal

Find source catalogs, image archives, and other astronomical resources registered with the NVO

A Registry is a distributed database of Virtual Observatory resources: primarily access services for catalog, image, and spectral data, but also descriptions of organizations and data collections. There are several coordinated registry implementations that share information by harvesting each other's resources. This registry is at STScI in Baltimore, MD.Searches for resources can be done by keyword, or advanced queries can be expressed in the SQL language. The registry is open for humans through web forms, or machines through SOAP web services.


DataScope

Using the NVO DataScope scientists can discover and explore hundreds of data resources available in the Virtual Observatory. DataScope uses the VO registry and VO access protocols to link to archives and catalogs around the world. Users can immediately discover what is known about a given region of the sky: they can view survey images from the radio through the X-ray, explore archived observations from multiple archives, find recent articles describing analysis of data in the region,

Discover and explore data in the Virtual Observatory

find known interesting or peculiar objects and survey datasets that cover the region. A summary page provides a quick précis of all of the available data. Users can download images and tables for further analysis on their local machines, or they can go directly to a growing set of VO enabled analysis tools, including Aladin, OASIS, VOPlot and VOStat.


OpenSkyQuery

Cross-match your data with numerous catalogs

OpenSkyQuery allows you to cross-match astronomical catalogs and select subsets of catalogs with a general and powerful query language. You can also import a personal catalog of objects and cross-match it against selected databases.


Spectrum Services

Search, plot, and retrieve SDSS, 2dF, and other spectraThe Spectrum Services web site is dedicated to spectrum related VO services. On this site you will find tools and tutorials on how to access close to 500,000 spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR1) and the 2 degree Field redshift survey (2dFGRS). The services are open to everyone to publish their own spectra in the same framework. Reading the tutorials on XML Web Services, you can learn how to integrate the 45 GB spectrum and passband database with your programs with few lines of code.


Web Enabled Source Identification with Cross-Matching (WESIX)

Upload images to SExtractor and cross-correlate the objects found with selected survey catalogs.

This NVO service does source extraction and cross-matching for any astrometric FITS image. The user uploads a FITS image, and the remote service runs the SExtractor software for source extraction. The resulting catalog can be cross-matched with any of several major surveys, and the results returned as a VOTable. The web page also allows use of Aladin or VOPlot to visualize results.


Future VO-enabled science

• NVO applications for 2005-2006 TBD in consultation with Science Steering Committee– Dynamic time series analysis, period fitting– “VO-Google”– Fast data inventory service– Flux-recovery service– Image registration and subtraction services– VO integration with legacy software systems (web

service interfaces, data access)– Data mining and data federation on increasingly

large, distributed databases


Education and Outreach

• NVO recognized as excellent vehicle for education and public outreach

• NVO EPO Coordinator (C. Christian) developing partnerships– Virtual Cosmos portal (UC Berkeley, STScI, NOAO,

ESO), NASA AISRP funded– Adler Planetarium CyberSpace– Learning Technologies WorldWind, NASA Ames– NVO/SDSS Pre-College Curriculum Support (

http://virtualobservatory.org)– Project Lite (Boston University), NSF funded (

http://lite.bu.edu/)

• Planning second EPO workshop for Summer 05

http://virtualobservatory.org/

http://lite.bu.edu/


Ear to the ground

• NSF and NASA working to create joint program; draft RFP could be available by next spring

• Build community support from the ground up– Demonstrations– Software releases– Summer School– EPO partnerships


Summary

• $10M+ committed in US, >$40M worldwide, to VO development

• Active international community is working and meeting regularly to establish the VO

• Major archives and catalogs available through the VO and more coming

• First public tools and applications now available for community use

• Community engagement under way• First research papers utilizing the VO beginning

to appear

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