The May 2010 issue of the IVOA Newsletter is now available at http://ivoa.net/newsletter/. This biannual newsletter for astronomers is intended to highlight new capabilities of VO tools and technologies for doing astronomy research. It also lists recent papers, and upcoming events. Comments and feedback are encouraged; you may contact the editors at ivoa-news-editors at ivoa.net.

A new version of DataScope (version 3.2) has been released. Using the full Directory for data collections and catalogs, the DataScope tool queries hundreds of astronomical services about a given location or region and organizes the data so that you can browse it, select data for download, or pass it into compatible tools for further analysis.

This new version contains significant enhancements to how data tables are displayed. Using the VOView web application (under development by the international VO community), tables can now be interactively manipulated. VOView is a utility for viewing large data tables within a Web browser. It is optimized for handling tables ranging in size from 1000 to 100,000 rows. A widget is provided whereby a user can select which columns to display and what order to display them in. Row paging of the tables is also provided.

Try it now!

Collect all data at a given position. DataScope

Download the new Transient Events Application at the iTunes Store! The heavens are much more dynamic than most people realize. Every night stars and galaxies vary in brightness and comets move through our solar system. The astronomy community has survey telescopes monitoring the sky on a regular basis looking for objects which vary in brightness or position in the night sky. The images from these telescopes are analyzed automatically and variable objects are published through the Skyalert system. Skyalert uses the international XML standard VOEvent for transmitting information about a recent astronomical transient, with a view to rapid follow-up. A VOEvent packet contains one or more of the “who, what, where, when, how, why” of a detected event.

Transient Events currently receives events from the Catalina Real-Time Survey (CRTS), with more surveys to be added in the future.  (Read more about the features of the Transient Events iPhone App)

The real-time event discovery, processing, and dissemination of events is made possible by NASA under grant NNG05GF22G, and by the NSF under grants AST-0909182 (CRTS) and OCI-0915473 (Skyalert). Creation of the Transient Events application was funded by the the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

The November 2009 issue of the IVOA Newsletter is now available at
http://ivoa.net/newsletter/. This biannual newsletter for astronomers is intended to highlight new capabilities of VO tools and technologies for doing astronomy research. It also lists recent papers, and upcoming events. Comments and feedback are encouraged; you may contact the editors at ivoa-news-editors@ivoa.net.

The ESA-VO Team is pleased to announce the release of VOSpec 5.5 available at:

• Applet version
• Webstart version

VOSpec is a tool able to handle Spectra in the VO context as well as providing analysis capabilities and easy integration of spectra coming from different data providers, wavelengths, and different metadata (e.g. units). This new release includes the following mayor features and improvements from V5.1:

• SAMP Integration - http://esavo.esac.esa.int/VOSpecManual/interoperability.html
• Best Fit Algorithm -   http://esavo.esac.esa.int/VOSpecManual/fitting.html
• Support to 1-D fits spectrum image - http://esavo.esac.esa.int/VOSpecManual/gui.html#open
• Update of the local file parsers, with use of the NVO SED library kindly provided and supported by the NVO Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophisics -http://vo.cfa.harvard.edu/soft/)

Furthermore, improvements from version 4 include:

• Registry interface update to rec 1.01 - New Euro-VO and NVO registries usage
• SSA interface updated to REC 1.04
• NVO SED library inclusion for SDM 1.0+ compatible spectra
• Dual spectra selector
  Reconfigurable tree
  Sortable table
• Local Registry
• Distance metadata calculation

For further information (manual, versioning info, other access interfaces) please check the VOSpec webpage.

High Performance Computing in Observational Astronomy: Requirements and Challenges
12-16 October 2009
Pune, India.

Poster: PDF

The theme of this meeting will be to discuss computationally intensive techniques important for different branches of astronomy.  These techniques are increasingly being applied and planned for data collection, real-time and off-line analysis, and interpretation of results.  Examples of such techniques include, among many others, software correlation of interferometric signals, dynamic beam forming and interference rejection, adaptive optics control for multi-segment telescopes, coded mask image analysis, matched filtering of gravitational wave signal, deconvolution and foreground subtraction of CMB maps, automated transient search etc.

Given the development and plans for large international astronomical facilities like the upgraded GMRT, eVLA, LOFAR, ASKAP, MeerKAT (and eventually the SKA) in radio, various new giant multi-segment mirror telescope projects in optical, new observatories like ASTROSAT in UV/x-ray, we feel that such a meeting will be well timed and will provide an appropriate forum for exchange of ideas and plans for handling the massive computing tasks associated with such large projects.  In particular, we feel that participants from different wave band regimes will benefit by possible cross-fertilization of ideas.  We expect significant participation from academia as well as the IT industry, and prominent researchers from both domains will be invited speakers at this meeting.

The AstroGrid project is pleased to announce the latest release of the AstroGrid VODesktop, version 1.2.3.1. This is a suite of desktop applications to enable astronomers to explore and bookmark resources from around the world, find data, store and share files in VOSpace, query databases, plot and manipulate tables, cross-match catalogs, and build and run scripts to automate sequences of tasks. Tools from other IVOA projects inter-operate with AstroGrid software, so you can also view and analyze images and spectra located in the VO.

The latest version includes new features and improvements, including improved descriptive information (metadata) for searching and filtering resources, and a new Multi-Query capability for searching resources against a user-supplied list of positions, as well as for just one position at a time. There are also a number of bug fixes and internal technical improvements. AstroGrid Python remains at V1.04. The latest version of Topcat is V3.4-1, March 2009. Important changes are listed at http://www.astrogrid.org/wiki/ReleaseNotes .

The third issue of the NVO newsletter was published March 23, 2009. Read the newsletter online. Subscribe to the NVO Mailing List to receive these newsletters, plus occasional announcements about how NVO can help your astronomy, including new software and services, schools and workshops.

A team formed at the 4th NVO Summer School is combining Virtual Observatory image data with the Google Sky interface, opening up scientific astronomy image archives to the general public.

Over the past several years, new technologies have created a revolution in astronomical data-access methods used by professional and amateur astronomers. The Virtual Observatory (VO) has introduced standards for data exchange that greatly simplify the research process.

Kate Becker writes about archival data and the NVO in the Boulder Daily Camera.

Though these “virtual observatories” are used primarily by professionals, they can also be welcoming to educators, students and amateur astronomers, who get instant access to the best telescopes in the world. And why not open the doors wide? It’s hard to imagine that this data will ever get “used up” — that all the good discoveries will one day be wrung out of it — so the more minds working away at it, the better.