Australian Virtual Observatory
The Australian Virtual Observatory (Aus-VO) will be a facility that provides a distributed, uniform interface to the data archives of Australia's major astronomical observatories, and to archives of astrophysical simulations.
Aus-VO will be a key component of the International Virtual Observatory, a worldwide facility which will link the archives of the world's major astronomical observatories into one distributed database.
Astronomers will explore Aus-VO and the IVO using advanced data mining and visualisation tools. These tools will exploit a unified data interface to enable cross-correlation and combined processing of data from otherwise disparate sources.
Work on Aus-VO in 2004 is partly funded an Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure (Equipment and Facilities) grant. The project partners are the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, New South Wales and Queensland, Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology, the Australian National University & Mount Stromlo Observatory, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. Aus-VO received LIEF funding in 2003, having been a founding member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance since June 2002. Australian astronomers have been active in the VO realm since December 2000.
This is the primary reference site for Aus-VO. The motivation and function of Aus-VO are described, and some detail is given on specific contributing projects to Aus-VO.
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General enquiries about Aus-VO can be made to support@aus-vo.org