Astronomy in the Framework of the Virtual Observatory

摘要

The advances in technology (telescope design and fabrica-tion, large-scale detector arrays, communication networks, storage andmanagement of archival data) are producing a revolution in Astron-omy. Although this scenario of multi-Terabyte on-line datasets inter-linked through high-speed networks should lead to a more complete andless biased understanding of complex astrophysical phenomena, the real-ity is that the progress in the scientific exploitation is not keeping pacewith the exponential growth of data. Two are the major limiting factorsfor this, namely, the absence of a real interoperability among astronomi-cal archives and the inefficiency of the classical methods of retrieving andanalyzing astronomical data to tackle the new vast datasets. The Virtual Observatory is an international project that aims to solvethese problems by means of: a) the creation of a federation of astrono-mical archives that, with the implementation of new technologies and standards, provides an efficient access to the astronomical data ("datagrid"). b) the development and implementation of analysis tools by thedata centres holding the data ("service grid"). After a brief description of the reasons driving the creation of a projectlike the Virtual Observatory I will describe some of the science cases thatare presently tackled in the context of the International Virtual Observa-tory Alliance (IVOA1) and the impact that using a VO methodology hashad on them.