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The Future of the Virtual Observatory

Robert HanischUS NVO Project Manager

Space Telescope Science Institute

THE US NATIONAL VIRTUAL OBSERVATORY

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The current state of affairs

• 16 national and international VO projects• Self-organized structure, International VO

Alliance, for exchange of experience and development of standards and protocols

• Working Groups and Interest Groups focus on key topics

• Mix of large and small projects• International recognition, with formal standing

in IAU through IAU VO Working Group• See http://ivoa.net

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What is working well

• IVOA partners are self-motivated• Collaboration is in everyone’s interest• Large (well-funded) projects provide

most of the infrastructure development• Small projects contribute software in

their areas of expertise/interest, or publish their unique data collections

• W3C-based standards process

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Challenges

• Distributed projects means that progress can be slow, effort diluted

• Internal project schedules and priorities can be in conflict with international agreements

• Project funding cycles are all different• Meetings require extensive travel,

telecons span 24 time zones, e-mail discussions span workdays

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Successes, infrastructure

• VOTable• SIAP• SSAP• ADQL• OpenSkyNode• Resource

Metadata, registries, harvesting

• VO Identifiers• UCDs• Space-Time

Coordinates• VOEvent• CEA• VOStore

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Successes, applications

• Aladin• VOPlot• Topcat• DataScope• OpenSkyQuery

• VOSpec• Specview• Spectrum

Services• WESIX• and many

others……and, VO-enabled research results are now beginning to appear (Padovani,McGlynn, Suchkov, Miller, …)

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Community engagement

• NVO Summer Schools I, II, and III (Sept 2004, Sept 2005, Sept 2006)

• NVO Research Initiatives program (2005-6)• Euro-VO Workshop (June 2005)• AstroGrid “spring school”• ADASS conferences

– 1/3 of ADASS abstracts mention VO explicitly– > 1/2 have some VO connection

• IAU General Assembly, VO Special Session (Prague, August 2006)

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The NVO Facility

• NVO development project was to finish in September 2006

• NSF and NASA preparing joint solicitation for ongoing NVO operations– NVO Facility intended to be small-scale national

observatory, funded for “the foreseeable future”– Strong endorsement from Astronomy & Astrophysics

Advisory Committee– Members of the NVO development team preparing NVO

Facility proposal– May include grants and fellowship program

• Solicitation continues to be delayed; NVO project awarded funding extension for FY 2007

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The NVO Facility: development

• Requirements analysis, priority assessment• Continued software development; technology

tracking• Standards and protocols, in collaboration with

international VO partners• Software templates, reference applications• Computational services and scalability (Grid,

Cyber-Infrastructure)• Security: authentication and authorization• Testing and system integration, multi-platform

support

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The NVO Facility: operations

• Repository for contributed software• Registry curation, service monitoring and validation• Data publication support• Data preservation• Data quality forum?• Computational services and scalability (Grid, Cyber-

Infrastructure)• Security: authentication and authorization• Testing and system integration, multi-platform

support• Documentation• User support, web site

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The NVO Facility: management

• Education and public outreach• Community engagement• Grants, fellowship, internships• Logging, metrics• Science program definition• Task management, reporting, budget planning

and justification• Agency liaison• Oversight and advisory committees• Board of Directors

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Transition challenges

• Development approach: open-loop, prototypes vs. structured, tested, maintained

• Project structure: extent of distributed effort, lines of authority and responsibility

• Governance and community oversight: management accountability

• Balance between science and IT-based motivations

• Performance goals, science metrics• Balance between NSF and NASA project

management styles

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NVO priorities in FY07

• To complete and enhance the VO core infrastructure, providing a full suite of data discovery and data access protocols.

• To improve user interfaces, documentation, and capabilities for NVO science applications.

• To further improve the NVO web site to make it easier for astronomers to utilize NVO tools in their regular research.

• To inform the community of VO capabilities and provide training opportunities through a presence at astronomy conferences, technical meetings, and dedicated training sessions such as the NVO Summer Schools.

• To engage the outreach and education communities in using VO tools and data products in the development of informal and formal science education.

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Discussion

• http://us-vo.org