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Virtual Observatory and Planets

22 juillet 2014

Either for the study of Solar system with the online ephemerides of IMCCE, or numerous databases supported in its laboratories and notably the encyclopaedia of exoplanets, Paris Observatory participates actively in the Virtual Observatory, by its OV-Paris center. A new flexible architecture is offered today in a series of publications, as part of the program Europlanet.

The Virtual Observatory (VO) has become one of the basic tools in Astronomy for sharing existing data, for visualization and data analysis, and for comparing related observations, for example in different wavelengths.

OV-Paris Data Centre, the VO expertise centre of the Observatory, is one actor of the Virtual Observatory in Astronomy. It also has long been active in web-based services for the study of the Solar System, with the IMCCE ephemerides online system and with data services maintained in its laboratories.

During the Europlanet program (2009-2012), OV-Paris contributed to the definition of a flexible architecture for the distribution of observational data in Planetary Science, reusing previous developments in Astronomy.
The results of this study were recently published in a series of three articles in Astronomy & Computing (Special Issue on the Virtual Observatory) with contributions from researchers and engineers of the Observatory.

Schéma de principe de l’OV planétologie

This system is largely organized around the VESPA interface hosted at the Observatory, which allows the user to query data services located throughout the world. Still in the prototype stage, this facility will be developed under the Europlanet-2020 program proposed to the European Union in 2014.

References

  • Erard S., B. Cecconi, P. Le Sidaner, J. Berthier, F. Henry, C. Chauvin, N. André, V. Génot, C. Jacquey, M. Gangloff, N. Bourrel, B. Schmitt, T. Capria, G. Chanteur (2014)Planetary Science Virtual Observatory architecture Astronomy & Computing, in press.
  • Génot V., N. André, B. Cecconi, M. Bouchemit, E. Budnik, N. Bourrel, M. Gangloff, N. Dufourg, S. Hess, R. Modolo, B. Renard, N. Lormant, L. Beigbeder, D. Popescu, J.-P. Toniutti (2014) Joining the yellow hub : implementations of the Simple Application Messaging Protocol in Space Physics analysis tools. Astronomy & Computing, in press.

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