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IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (FM44)

Sunday May 20 @ 16.00

Contents

Logistics

NCSA building, Board room, Urbana, USA

DRAFT Agenda FM44

Roll Call and Agenda (MA)
Minutes of TM43
Review of Actions
Project Reports - Significant Events Only
Report of the TCG status (CA)
Approval of new IVOA Recommendation(s) [Standing Item]
TCG Chair and vice chair
WG Chairs and vice-Chairs with expiring terms
Lists of Data Centres (MA)
Future Interops (All)
Newsletter editors and oversight group renewals
Date of next meeting
AOB
Summary of Actions (MA)

Reports from the Projects

Argentina - NOVA

NOVA is working in building up data bases of the digital data and organizing the steps to follow to digitize the historical data which involved more than 30000 spectra and photometric plates distributing in at least three different institutions. Funds has been secured to hire a technical coordinator. Some equipment is also being acquired to store databases. NOVA is organizing a mini-workshop to bring VO closer to the researchers and motivate them to make their data public in NOVA. We are making an effort to coordinate this workshop with the Interop in Brasil. Alternatively it could take place during the first semester of 2013. Finally decision will be make upon conformation of funds.

ArVO

AstroGrid

Australia-VO

Since the Australia-VO lacks any substantial public funding all activities are on a purely voluntary basis and are almost always driven and funded by specific project needs. Nevertheless all of the major survey projects in Australia are actively working in the direction of making their data available through standard VO interfaces. Recently a number of new services have been published by the ANU Supercomputing Facility. Other services are under development for Skymapper, ASKAP, MWA and ATLAS data. The latter activity will be supported by federal funding through Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) and is regarded as an exemplar for the other major surveys, in particular the EMU and Wallaby surveys to be carried out with ASKAP. Expectations from most of these projects are pretty high with regard to what the VO can or should provide and the IVOA should very carefully listen to the specific requirements of such projects in general.

AAL also took over the ownership of the various Australia-VO domain names. Discussions are under way to move the current host of the domain under AAL as well. Once this has been established the site will be re-vamped and updated.

BRAVO

China-VO

CVO

Euro-VO

The European EuroVO-ICE project (International Cooperation Empowerment), originally planned for one year starting on 1 September 2010, has been extended to an additional year and will end on 31 August 2012. This small project (215 keuros) has allowed European VO projects to continue to coordinate their activities, including a Technology Forum on 9-10 May 2012 to discuss technical activities.

A project called CoSADIE (Collaborative and Sustainable Astronomical Data Infrastructure for Europe) is in negotiation with the European Commission. 2 years, 5 partners (CNRS, INAF, INTA, UEDIN, UHEI), 475 keuros, aiming at

defining concrete elements and coordination structures to prepare for a sustainable Euro-VO, in close collaboration with Astronet, inlcuding discussions with the funding agencies. Astronet gathers a group of European funding agencies and builds up a comprehensive long-term planning for the development of European astronomy.
continuing European coordination, dissemination of the VO knowledge in the European astronomer and data centre communities, and consolidation of education activities.

The work programme includes a Hands-on school and a Data Centre Forum. EC final decision about the project should be known by this summer, and the project aims to start on September 1st, 2012.

Collaboration with European projects which define a generic infrastructure for scientific data is also planned, in an international context.

ESAVO

France VO

GAVO

HVO

Japan-VO

Ukraine VO

VAO

During the course of the past year the VAO has completed essentially all of its planned activities, bringing a number of new research tools and capabilities to the community and establishing a rigorous operational environment. The new re-search tools have been introduced to the community via presentations and exhibits at AAS meetings, international conferences, and through an ongoing series of VO Community Days. Use of VAO tools and services, initially somewhat stagnant owing to a two-year funding hiatus for the US VO program, is now accelerating. Indeed, much of the data being used in the astronomy community is being accessed through VO standard services, even though astronomers are generally unaware that this is the case.

A program of science collaborations with the research community has led to new science products and greater availability of astronomical data to the community at large. Proposals from the community for additional collaborations were solicited in an open call in January 2012, and we expect to start several new collaborations later this spring.

During the fall of 2011 and spring of 2012 the VAO project, in response to redirection from NSF and NASA, downsized and reorganized. Seven original work areas were reduced to four and resources were reapportioned in accord with agency guidance to focus on infrastructure. These four work areas are Operations, User Support, Science Applications, and Standards and Infrastructure. Efforts in the areas of technology evaluation and data curation and preservation have been integrated into Standards and Infrastructure. The VAO’s education and public outreach program has been terminated, in accord with agency direction, with only close-out work proceeding to assure that prior efforts can be resumed should resources be found to continue this program.

More details are available at http://www.usvao.org/documents/Reports/Annual/VAO-AR-April2012.pdf.

RVO

SVO

(Since February 2012)

Manpower: 10 FTEs. The SVO Thematic Network (people from Spanish institutes with interest in the VO) is composed of almost 200 participants from more than 30 labs.

VO Archives:

- Presentation on the archive design of HEXA, a 6.5m telescope proposed for the Calar Alto Observatory (http://riastronomia.es/opencms/opencms/Workshops/R_20111205.html)

- Presentation on the SVO contribution to the Gaia mission: https://gaia.am.ub.es/Twiki/pub/RecGaia/RiaICTS/Gaia+ICTS_Solano.pdf

VO Data Models:

- Building a VO-compliant Radio Astronomical DAta Model for Single-dish radio telescopes (RADAMS) (Santander-Vela, J. D.; García, E.; Leon, S.; Espigares, V.; Ruiz, J. E.; Verdes-Montenegro, L.; Solano, E.). Accepted by Experimental Astronomy. (2012arXiv1205.2562S)

VO Science:

- New ultracool subdwarfs identified in large-scale surveys using Virtual Observatory tools: Part I: UKIDSS LAS DR5 vs SDSS DR7 (Lodieu, N.; Espinoza Contreras, M.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Solano, E.; Aberasturi, M.; Martín, E. L.). Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics. (2012arXiv1204.4328L)

Outreach:

- The citizen-science project "Identification of Near Earth Asteroids using VO tools" (http://www.laeff.cab.inta-csic.es/projects/near/main/?&newlang=eng) described in the Galileo Teacher Training Project Newsletters (http://www.site.galileoteachers.org/images/stories/newsletter/gttp_ghou_newsletter_3_low.pdf).

- The same project described in a national newspaper (http://www.publico.es/ciencias/421844/los-cerebros-de-la-ciencia-estan-en-la-nube)

Education:

- VO course (30 hours) in the Master of Advanced Techniques in Physics of the Granada University (http://www.ugr.es/~mtaf/inicio_eng.htm)