Mercury,
March/April 2003 Table of Contents
by
James C. White II
The
National Virtual Observatory will revolutionize astronomy by providing
unparalleled access to data.
The
nature of astronomical investigation is about to change. Don't fret
the loss of the romantic elements of astronomy, such as people spending
long hours in observatory control rooms. Rather, embrace the new
tools and resources available from the National Virtual Observatory
(NVO), the embodiment of a new paradigm in observational and theoretical
astronomy.
Two
broad conditions are driving the development of this nontraditional
observatory: a smothering wealth of digital informational and profound
advances in computing technology. Data streaming from space-based
observatories and from ground-based surveys threaten to overwhelm
the astronomy community. We must have mechanisms in place for archiving
these data and for routinely culling information pertinent to a
given investigation. With more powerful computers, sophisticated
algorithms, inexpensive data storage, and fast networks, we are
ready to pioneer a new way of interrogating the heavens.
The
National Science Foundation has committed $10 million to develop
the NVO. Principal investigators Alex Szalay of Johns Hopkins University
and Roy Williams of Caltech lead a team of astronomers and computer
scientists spread around the United States at roughly 20 institutions.
The precise nature of the NVO will be determined by the scientific
desires and technological realities of the age, but the "Observatory"
is already a full year into its anticipated 5-year construction
and implementation stage. By most accounts, it's ahead of schedule.
The
NVO is not really an "observatory" per se in that there will no
new telescopes, and it's not "virtual" in the sense that all data
will be genuine. Instead, the NVO will be a structure that combines
enormous amounts of observational data into a standardized, minable
data archive covering all wavebands, all sampled resolutions, and
the entire sky. The data will come from large, international, multiwavelength
surveys such as 2MASS and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and smaller,
more directed surveys such as the Digitized Palomar Observatory
Sky Survey.
Even
the manner in which astronomers handle and store data will be different
for the NVO. If you accumulate a few trillion bytes of data from
a survey, just store it on your own machines — the NVO will connect
the astronomers who wish to use those data to the data itself. Imagine
the NVO as a grand nexus that will link huge data sets, tools for
mining those data sets, and users of all levels. Indeed, this new
paradigm is being assembled with an egalitarian emphasis on education
and public outreach. From the beginning, the NVO will stand ready
for use by anyone — from a 6th-grade teacher to a high-energy astrophysicist.
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This
mock-up of the NVO multispectral image viewer shows the power
of the virtual observatory. Users will be able to locate and
retrieve images of the galaxy M87 from data archives around
the world and display them in a single view. The NVO will
construct a spectral energy distribution to show the brightness
of M87 in different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Courtesy of the Space Telescope Science Institute Audio-Visual
Laboratory. |
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