Astronomical Archives of the Future: A Virtual Observatory

TL;DR

The paper discusses the development of a virtual observatory that integrates multi-wavelength astronomical surveys, emphasizing the importance of standardization and collaboration to handle large datasets and enable advanced data mining.

Contribution

It identifies key areas for community standardization and highlights the potential benefits of interdisciplinary partnerships in federating large astronomical databases.

Findings

Standardization can significantly improve data federation.

Interdisciplinary collaborations can enhance data mining techniques.

A framework for integrating multi-wavelength surveys is proposed.

Abstract

Astronomy is entering a new era as multiple, large area, digital sky surveys are in production. The resulting datasets are truly remarkable in their own right; however, a revolutionary step arises in the aggregation of complimentary multi-wavelength surveys (i.e. the cross-identification of a billion sources). Federating these different datasets, however, is an extremely challenging task. With this task in mind, we have identified several areas where community standardization can provide enormous benefits in order to develop the techniques and technologies necessary to solve the problems inherent in federating these large databases, as well as the mining of the resultant aggregate data. Several of these areas are domain specific, however, the majority of them are not. We feel that the inclusion of non-astronomical partnerships can provide tremendous insights.