The Astrophysical Virtual Observatory to EURO-VO transition Paolo Padovani ESO Virtual Observatory Systems Department EURO-VO Facility Centre Scientist

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV2 The Virtual Observatory  An innovative, evolving system, which takes advantage of astronomical data explosion  It will allow users to interrogate multiple data centres in a seamless and transparent way and to utilize at best astronomical data  Data analysis tools (in-situ) and models will be made more accessible  It will allow new SCIENCE by moving Astronomy beyond era of “classical” identification by combining all available information: data mining (increase obs. efficiency) + statistical identification (less need for spectra)  Good communication  common language! Definition and adoption of VO standards and protocols within the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA:

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV3 AVO  Astrophysical Virtual Observatory Project: 5 M€, R&D on scientific requirements and technology for building the VO in Europe, 50% funded by European Community (Fifth Framework Programme [FP5])  Phase A, /5 (  Driven by strategy of scientific VO annual demonstrations  Science Working Group established to provide scientific advice to AVO project  Project completed

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV4 AVO’s Main Achievements  Three science demonstrations  First refereed astronomical paper enabled via end-to-end use of VO tools and systems: “Discovery of optically faint obscured quasars with Virtual Observatory tools”, Padovani, Allen, Rosati, & Walton, 2004, A&A, 424, 545 ESA/ESO press release May  A Science Reference Mission  New VO tools: distributed workflows (MySpace); the AVO prototype can be used NOW for the day-to-day work of astronomers: Java application (

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV5 AVO’s Main Achievements (conts.)  Founding member of IVOA  Input for development of VO standards: VOTable, Data Access Layer, Data Model, Uniform Content Descriptors, Web Services  Usage of VO standards for interoperability between services (e.g., VOSpec - Aladin - Specview)

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV6 The Next Step  European Virtual Observatory (EURO-VO) Project: a program to build the Virtual Observatory in Europe  Eight partners: ESO & ESA, plus six national nodes: INAF (Italy), INSU (France), INTA (Spain), NOVA (Netherlands), PPARC (UK), and RDS (Germany)  Total planned EURO-VO resources: ~ 60 person/yr ( ), ~ 3 more than AVO  Three components

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV7 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

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV8 EURO-VO Startup  VOTC funded (VO-TECH)  EURO-VO MOU was signed in September 2005 ( )  VOFC and VODCA activities already started with help from OPTICON, RADIONET, ESO and ESA DCA: board meetings held (Dec. 2004, Jun. 2005, and Sept. 2005) FP6 proposal submitted Sept FC: First activity: EURO-VO workshop (ESO June 2005) ( EURO-VO Science Advisory Committee soon to be established Goal: fund European science based on VO tools

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV9 VO-TECH  A VO-TC project to complete the technical work necessary to build the EURO-VO  6.6 M€ from EC [FP6], 12 FTEs (+12 from partners) for 3 yrs; VO development at ASTROGRID (Edinburgh, Leicester, & Cambridge), ESO, French VO, and INAF (Italy)  Start: April 1st 2005  Four broad areas (Design Studies): Infrastructure (Lead: Leicester) New User Tools (Lead: ESO) Resource Discovery (Lead: French VO) Data Exploration (Lead: Edinburgh)  Six month sub-projects  Input: AVO Science Reference Mission, AVO Science Working Group, VO-TECH Science Team, partners, EURO-VO Science Advisory Committee

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV10 EURO-VO and the Community  AVO has reached out to the European astronomical community mostly through the SWG, plus papers and articles (ESO Messenger, ST-ECF & EAS Newsletters)  EURO-VO has reached out to the data providers through a dedicated workshop at ESO (June 27 - July 1); plan is to make this an annual event  EURO-VO will get community input through the SAC and VO-based science projects  We have also started having a presence at JENAM meetings, to contact directly (and get feedback from) astronomers

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV11 Summary The Virtual Observatory will make handling and manipulating astronomical data and tools residing at various locations around the world much easier than it is now The AVO, a Phase-A, project has produced REAL VO and science tools, which can be (and are!) used for astronomical research The EURO-VO will now make the VO in Europe a (non-virtual!) reality Follow our progress at

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV12 15

October 5, 2005P. Padovani, ADASS XV13 Astronomy in the XXI century Radical changes are needed!  Huge surveys: 100M sources at 100 yr!  Ever fainter sources, routinely surpassing the identification limits of m telescopes (R mag ≈ 25)  Huge data collections: e.g., downloading Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR3 (~ 1/2 of total) images (6 Tb)  ~ 2.3 months at 1 Mb/s (ESO’s speed); catalogs (2.3 Tb)  ~ 1 month. On DVDs  ~ 1,300 of them. And analysis?? (similar size for MACHO, 2MASS etc …)  Ever increasing amount of data: e.g., ESO archive: x 100 increase in next 7 yrs to 1,000 Tbytes