Further Science Requirements from the AVO

Paolo Padovani, ESO

Abstract

Introduction

The Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) was a Research and Development project on the scientific requirements and technologies necessary to build a Virtual Observatory for European astronomy. The AVO was jointly funded by the European Commission with six European organisations participating in a three year Phase-A work programme. The AVO was driven by its strategy of regular scientific demonstrations of VO technology and had a Science Working Group (SWG) established to provide scientific advice to the project which consisted of three SWG sub-groups: cosmology, galaxies, stars, covering a broad range of astronomical interests. The AVO project covered the period October 2001 - October 2004 but it will officially terminate with the last AVO demo in January 2005.

The AVO Science Reference Mission

The Science Reference Mission (SRM) defines key scientific results that the full-fledged EURO-VO should achieve when fully implemented. It will consist of science cases, with related requirements, against which the success of the EURO-VO will be measured. It's being put together right now, with input from the Science Working Group. The final version should be ready by the end of January 2005.

One example of an SRM case which has been submitted already is "Galaxy formation and evolution from z = 10 to z = 0.1". Some of the (missing) VO tools needed by this case includes: 1. Point Spread Function (PSF) matching for images taken in different bands with different instruments (and possibly varying across the image); 2. fitting tool to find best match between observations and models; 3. inclusion of already existing morphological software (e.g., GALFIT, GIM2D, etc.); 4. inclusion of already existing theoretical simulations (e.g., VIRGO, GALICS, etc.)

The AVO Science Working Group

I give here a selection of SWG input which went beyond the AVO. More details can be found at http://wiki.eurovotech.org/bin/view/VOTech/ScienceDrivenVOTechTools.

• Show available data for a source/position (or list of sources/positions) from all archives; classify products (raw, calibrated, science-ready). This obviously requires a strong coordination with Data Center Alliance (DCA).

• Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) from archival data (VOSpec moving in that directio