Virtual Observatory Group: Scientific exploitation of astronomical archives

Line coordinator:

Astrophysics Department (CAB ESAC)

Centro de Astrobiología’s Virtual Observatory Group has a long experience in the development and exploitation of astronomical archives. Already in 1998 the former LAEFF was selected to host INES, the IUE satellite data archiving and distribution system.

Spanish Virtual Observatory (SVO)

The Virtual Observatory Group is responsible for the Spanish Virtual Observatory (SVO) project, an initiative that has been part of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) since June 2004 and in which it plays a relevant role both from a scientific-technical and managerial point of view. The Spanish Virtual Observatory is the framework in which, thanks to a novel research methodology and powerful analysis tools, it is possible to undertake projects that otherwise would not have been possible.

The group's objectives are:

1- Maintenance and development of Centro de Astrobiología's Astronomical Data Centre.

Our group is responsible for the most important astronomical data centre managed by a Spanish institution. Among the archives that are part of this data centre are the archive of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (the largest telescope in the world) and of the Calar Alto Observatory (the most important in continental Europe). Having an archive integrated into the Virtual Observatory ensures interoperability with other astronomical archives and services and greatly facilitates the scientific exploitation of the archive. Our objectives for the coming years focus on the ingestion of data from new instrumentation as well as the development of high-level products (observations processed, calibrated and ready for use by the astronomical community) adapted to internationally accepted Virtual Observatory standards.

2- Development of research lines based on a Virtual Observatory methodology.

This is one of the lines that has given the group the greatest prestige at international level, as demonstrated by the large number of science-VO articles published in refereed journals in recent years. The aim of our group is to establish collaborations with research groups that can benefit from using a Virtual Observatory methodology for their scientific cases and to actively participate in the development of these cases. Educational activities (participation in Master’s courses, supervision of doctoral theses, organisation of VO schools, etc.) are other tasks to be carried out within this line of work.

3- Development of data mining and analysis tools.

The volume of information in astronomical archives requires the development of new analysis methodologies and tools. Tools such as VOSA, Clusterix, Filter Profile Service , SVODisc or Specphot play a fundamental role in the efficient exploitation of existing information in astronomical archives. Furthermore, artificial intelligence techniques are particularly relevant in the framework of the Virtual Observatory. Supervised/unsupervised classification and knowledge extraction projects in missions such as Gaia, CARMENES or Euclid will be our main objectives in this line of work.

4- Educational and outreach activities.

The astronomical archives, within the framework of the Virtual Observatory, offer enormous possibilities for education and outreach (participation in university master’s degrees, development of educational material, citizen science projects, collaborations with the amateur community, etc.). We aim at continuing to promote this type of initiatives, which have been so well received in recent years among the general public. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the citizen science project for the improvement of near-Earth asteroid orbits, a project that began in 2011 and currently has thousands of followers.

Members | Researchers