“The National Virtual Observatory is neither national, nor virtual, nor an observatory,” says George Djorgovski, a Caltech astronomy professor who is involved in developing the NVO, one of a half dozen or so such projects worldwide. The emerging virtual observatories aim to handle the humongous datasets that are proliferating in astronomy and will have built-in software tools for people to mine and query data across archives. Eventually, the various projects will be knit together so that ground- and space-based astronomy archives from around the world are linked and accessible to all.
In its 2000 decadal survey, the US astronomy community named the NVO its highest priority in the $100 million-or-less category. Last November, NSF awarded the NVO $10 million over five years. At about the same time, the European Commission granted 5 million euros (roughly $4.5 million) over three years to the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, a consortium in Europe. AstroGrid...
