The Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO) at the 221st AAS Meeting

The VAO is funded to provide a computational infrastructure for virtual astronomy.  When complete, it will enable astronomers to discover and access data in archives worldwide, allow them to share and publish datasets, and support analysis of data through an “ecosystem” of interoperable tools.

The project had a considerable presence at the recently completed meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), held in Long Beach, California, Jan 6-10, 2013. As well as an exhibit that offered visitors demos of VAO services (and a free flashlight!), there were a series of posters, prepared by team members and collaborators, that gave progress reports on project activities. The list below contains links to those posters available for download (also available at the VAO web page):

• The Research Tools for the Virtual Astronomical Observatory
• The Virtual Astronomical Observatory Forum
• Discovering Data in the Virtual Observatory
• Desktop Tools for the Virtual Observatory
• Data Discovery and Exploration with seleste
• VOStat: Statistical Analysis through the Virtual Observatory
• The Role of the Virtual Astronomical Observatory in the Era of Big Data
• Scripting the Virtual Observatory in Python
• VAO Tools Enhance CANDELS Research Productivity
• Data Sharing and Publishing using the Virtual Astronomical Observatory
• Distributing Variable Star Data to the Virtual Observatory
• Constructing and Analyzing Spectral Energy Distributions with the Virtual Observatory

Browsing these posters will give a good idea of the scope of the project: everything from how you can share data, how you can use the VAO to discover and visualize data, how you can use scripting tools to access and analyze data, how to build spectral energy distributions and cross-compare large catalogs of sources, and more.

The VAO team at the exhibit:

Ms. Sarah Emery organized the VAO exhibit and the poster displays. Disclosure: I am the Program Manager for the VAO.