Wednesday December 7, 2011
9:00AM – 12:00PM
Location: Hameetman Auditorium, Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology

The Virtual Observatory (VO) is realizing global electronic integration of astronomy data, tools, and services for use by individuals around the world. This new environment of interoperability will facilitate astronomy research with a speed, efficiency, and effectiveness not previously possible, and it will be available to all researchers, independent of their affiliation or access to observing facilities.

During this “VO Day”, aimed at research astronomers, VO experts from the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO) – one of many VO projects worldwide – will demonstrate new tools and services for data-intensive astronomy in the context of a range of science use cases and tutorials. These use cases and tutorials, based on recent results from the literature and on-going missions, will include:

• constructing and modeling spectral energy distributions
• cross-matching objects from diverse catalogs
• exploration of time series data
• image analysis tools.

This workshop is organized and sponsored by the US Virtual Astronomical Observatory. The workshop is open to anyone interested, and there is no registration fee. Registration, however, is required – Please visit the websites for registration and further information, including maps & directions.

VAODay@LA: http://www.usvao.org/voday@la

A Universe of Astronomical Data

“After a decade of developing the tools and infrastructure needed to get these databases to talk to each other, the project, now called the Virtual Astronomical Observatory and funded by NASA and the NSF, opened for business in May. “We’re moving onto the operational phase,” says [Matthew] Graham, a member of the program council of the VAO. “The hope is that we can really make an impact on the community.” In addition to Graham, CACR computational scientist Roy Williams also plays a leading role with the VAO.”