IVOA Newsletter Issue 001, September 2008 Contributors: List of names and affiliations Editor: Mark Allen, Observatoire de Strasbourg WELCOME This newsletter aims to bring the latest news about Virtual Observatory tools and services to astronomers. Short news bites intended to highlight new astronomy capabilities built on and enabled by VO technologies, with links provided to download pages and detailed information. *What is the VO? The Virtual Observatory (VO) will enable a new way of doing astronomy, moving from an era of observations of small, carefully selected samples of objects in one or a few wavelength bands, to the use of multi-wavelength data for millions, if not billions of objects. Such datasets will allow researchers to discover subtle but significant patterns in statistically rich and unbiased databases, and to understand complex astrophysical systems through the comparison of data to numerical simulations. The VO will provide simultaneous access to multi-wavelength archives and advanced visualization and statistical analysis tools. *What is the IVOA? The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) was formed in June 2002 with a mission to "facilitate the international coordination and collaboration necessary for the development and deployment of the tools, systems and organizational structures necessary to enable the international utilization of astronomical archives as an integrated and interoperating virtual observatory." The IVOA now comprises 16 VO projects from Armenia, Australia, Canada, China, Europe, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Membership is open to other national and international projects according to the IVOA Guidelines for Participation. You can read more about the IVOA and what we do at http://www.ivoa.net/pub/info/. VO APPLICATIONS HIGHLIGHTS *AstroGrid Desktop Suite This newly released suite includes several interlinked tools : VOExplorer, Astroscope/Helioscope, File Explorer, Task Runner, and Query Builder. You can search for resources and data in the VO; bookmark your favourites; fetch images, spectra and catalogues; run queries on databases; save and share files in VOSpace; and invoke remote applications. VO Desktop also runs background software called "Astro Runtime" which handles all the internet calls. More information: http://www.astrogrid.org * Large Images in Aladin Aladin now supports use of large images, not limited by the local computer memory More information: http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/aladin.gml * VO via command line Query and Access VO Images, Catalogs and Tables via a set of command line tools made available from NVO, e.g. vodata ­v ­C 2mass­psc,HST ngc4258 0.1 More information: http://iraf-nvo.noao.edu/vo-cli/ * VirGO v1.3.1 VirGO is the next generation Visual Browser for the ESO Science Archive Facility. VirGO provides an easy access to millions of observations in a visual and intuitive way. Its main feature is the performance of real-time access and graphical display of a large number of observations by showing instrumental footprints and image previews, and the selection and filtering for subsequent retrieval. It uses the DSS as background images and allows to view the sky in a real life mode as seen from the main ESO sites. Data interfaces are based on VO standards enabling access to images and spectra (through SIA and SSA protocols) hosted by other data centers. VirGO can also exchange data with other VO applications through PLASTIC. A large fraction of ESO's non proprietary science products are already accessible through VirGO and more are to come. More information: http://archive.eso.org/cms/virgo/ VO SCIENCE - RECENT PAPERS Young stars and brown dwarfs surrounding Alnilam (eps Ori) and Mintaka (del Ori) Caballero J.A. & Solano E., A&A, in press [astro-ph/0804.2184] SDSSJ124155.33+114003.7 -- a Missing Link Between Compact Elliptical and Ultracompact Dwarf Galaxies Chilingarian I.V. & Mamon G.A., 2008, MNRAS, 385, 83 Invisible sunspots and rate of solar magnetic flux emergence Dalla S., Fletcher L., Walton, N. A., 2008, A&A, 479, L1 Fossil Groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Santos W.A., Mendes de Oliveira C., Sodre L. Jr 2007, AJ, 134, 1551 Albus 1: A Very Bright White Dwarf Candidate Caballero J.A., Solano E. 2007, ApJ, 665, L151 Using VO tools to investigate distant radio starbursts hosting obscured AGN in the HDF(N) region Richards A.M.S., Muxlow T.W.B., Beswick,R., et al. 2007, A&A, 472, 805 Flare productivity of newly-emerged paired and isolated solar active regions Dalla S., Fletcher L., Walton N.A. 2007, A&A, 468, 1103 VO CALENDAR *23-27 June 2008 | Euro-VO DCA Workshop on how to publish data in the VO | Garching/München, Germany This workshop is particularly targetted at participants from astronomical data centres and larger projects in order to provide the knowledge and experience to enable them to publish a range of datasets to the Virtual Observatory (VO). *3-11 September, 2008 | The 2008 NVO Summer School | Santa Fe, New Mexico In this nine-day, hands-on summer school, participants will work with experienced NVO users and software specialists to become familiar with how to discover, access, visualize, and analyze data with the Virtual Observatory. *5-8 October 2008 | "Astronomical Data and the Virtual Observatory" session at CODATA21 | Kiev, Ukraine Session Title: Managing Astronomical Data; Lessons learned in the development of virtual observatories. Call for Papers deadline March 31, 2008 *27-31 October | IVOA Interoperability | Baltimore, Maryland The IVOA Interop Meetings are aimed at making significant progress in generating new standards powering the development of the world wide Virtual Observatory initiatives. *2-5 November 2008 | ADASS XVIII | Quebec City, Canada The Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) conference provides a forum for scientists and programmers concerned with algorithms, software and software systems employed in the acquisition, reduction, analysis, and dissemination of astronomical data. *leap second ITU meeting Oct 08 ? *IAU GA VO session? *International Yr of Astro? ----------------------------- Contact Information: ???@ivoa.net Subscription Information:? Privacy Policy?