Virtual Observatory: From Concept to Implementation
Abstract
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 a framework in which information technology is harnessed to organize, maintain, and explore the rich information content of the exponentially growing data sets, and to enable a qualitatively new science to be done with them. VO will become a complete, open, distributed, web-based framework for astronomy of the early 21st century. A number of significant efforts worldwide are now striving to convert this vision into reality. The technological and methodological challenges posed by the information-rich astronomy are also common to many other fields. We see a fundamental change in the way all science is done, driven by the information technology revolution.
Additional Information
© 2005 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. We thank the numerous friends and collaborators who developed the ideas behind the Virtual Observatory, and made it a reality; they include Charles Alcock, Robert Brunner, Dave De Young, Francoise Genova, Jim Gray, Bob Hanisch, George Helou, Wil O'Mullane, Ray Plante, Tom Prince, Arnold Rots, Alex Szalay, and many, many others, too numerous to list here, for which we apologize. We also acknowledge a partial support from the NSF grants AST-0122449, AST-0326524, AST-0407448, and DMS-0101360, NASA contract NAG5-9482, and the Ajax Foundation.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 69760
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160818-142549441
- NSF
- AST-0122449
- NSF
- AST-0326524
- NSF
- AST-0407448
- NSF
- DMS-0101360
- NASA
- NAG5-9482
- Ajax Foundation
- Created
-
2016-08-18Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 345