IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (TM33)

Weds 23 Sept 2009 @ 15.00-16.30 GMT (click the link to find your time)

Logistics

Telecon:

Agenda (DRAFT as of 20090910)

1. Roll Call and Agenda -­ NW
2. Minutes of FM 32 and FM 32S
3. Project Reports ­- Significant Events Only
4. Review of Action Items ­ NW
5. Approval of New IVOA Recommendations ­ Standing Item
6. Report by committees - FP
7. TCG status - CA
8. Autumn 2009 Interop Status Report – PP
9. Spring 2010 Interop Status Report – DS
10. Venue/ Date of Autumn 2010 Interop - MO
11. Date of Next Exec Meeting
12. AOB
13. Review of New Action Items

Reports from the Projects

ArVO

ArVO group members at present are: A.M. Mickaelian (Principal Investigator), H.V. Astsatryan (Technical Manager), T.Yu. Magakian and L.K. Erastova (Project Scientists), L.A. Sargsyan, P.K. Sinamyan, and S.A. Ghazaryan (Scientific/Technical Assistants), and G.A. Mikayelyan (Web Master). Two more students from the Yerevan State University (YSU) are involved in the project, too.

Work on setting up the Armenian VO server on ArmCluster at the Institute of Informatics and Automation Problems (IIAP) has been continued, as well as the establishment and utilization of the Virtual Observatories standards in Armenia.

The second version (BPD v2) of the Byurakan Observatory electronic plate database has been created and will be soon open (some 14,000 plates). It will give full access by various parameters: sky area, observing project, telescope, observing mode, date of observation, observer, etc. The digitization works of the Byurakan archive plates are being continued. The digitized Byurakan plates will make up the main part of the Armenian astronomical data centre.

The ISTC project (A-1606) on "Development of Armenian-Georgian Grid Infrastructure and applications in the Fields of High Energy Physics, Astrophysics and Quantum Physics" has been continued in collaboration with 6 other Armenian and Georgian institutions, which includes the development of Armenian-Georgian VO based on the plate databases of Byurakan and Abastumani observatories. This will be the first attempt to create a regional VO, as in the future we will need to expand the VO projects regionally to cover larger areas in the world.

AstroGrid (UK-VO)

The good news is that AstroGrid recently made a full documented release of its infrastructure software, which can be found at http://deployer.astrogrid.org . This is intended for both data centres and other VO projects. As before, the astronomer user-software is downloadable from a separate site, http://www.astrogrid.org

The bad news is that our intended follow-on project, VOTC:UK, has been turned down. We received some encouraging words, and were told that this did not prejudice smaller separate proposals in the VO area, but essentially there is currently no money for a major new project of that size. AstroGrid formally ends in December 2009. A variety of funding sources means that a good fraction of the staff are funded through to April 2010, and some for longer. We are actively pursuing a portfolio of small projects through STFC, ESPRC, JISC, and EU to keep as many staff as possible in the game.

The intention of the AstroGrid partnership is now to continue AstroGrid as an open source project. We are in the process of creating the "AstroGrid Software Foundation" along the lines of Apache, Python etc, and submitting a proposal for a very small number of staff to maintain and co-ordinate the software base. We will welcome software contributions from other VO projects and data centre staff, as well as ex-AstroGrid staff on continuing EU and UK VO-related projects. More detail on the structure and working practices will be available soon.

Australia-VO

China-VO

CVO

Euro-VO

France VO

GAVO

HVO

Japan-VO

Korean VO

NVO

The NVO project formally concludes on 30 September 2009. Funding has been exhausted for some months now, and the successor project, VAO, remains stalled at the NSF. NASA funding has been released to a few of the collaborating sites in the VAO, but with the caveat that funds not be spent until the NSF portion of the program is funded and a final program plan has been submitted and approved by the agencies. At the same time, NASA centers have been told that any unspent funds at the end of the fiscal year will be lost. Go figure.

Weekly technical telecons continue and team members remain engaged in discussion of IVOA standards such as TAP, SIAP V2, VODataService, VOSpace, Registry Interface, VOSI, UWS, SLAP, and SSDM. However, US VO participation in the November Interop meeting will be limited to those people who are able to secure non-VO funds for their expenses.

We continue to work with NSF to resolve the funding roadblock. However, since it is now almost 1 1/2 years since the VAO proposal was submitted, and funds are yet to be released, the US VO project will require some time to regroup.

RVO

SVO

VObs.it

VO-India

Reports from WGs & IGs(follows order as at http://www.ivoa.net/forum/)

Applications WG

Data Access Layer WG

Data Models WG

Grid and Web Services Working Group

Registry WG

Semantics/UCD WG

VOEvent

VOQL WG

VOTable WG

Astro-RG IG

Data Curation and Preservation IG

This IG has mainly been dormant in recent months. The NSF DataNet initiative in the US has selected an NVO-affiliated project for funding. But as with VAO, NSF has not yet finalized the award some 10 months after the selection decision was made. The project PI, Sayeed Choudhury (JHU) will present a paper at the conference "Ensuring Long-Term Preservation and Adding Value to Scientific and Technical Data" being held at ESAC in early December.

Theory IG

Standards & Processes