Svezhii NAture:
Internet to link vast astronomy databases
[WASHINGTON] Astronomers are launching an ambitious plan to link
dozens of databases across the Internet. The US National
Virtual Observatory has been awarded a $10-million grant
from the National Science Foundation to present information
gathered from both ground-based and orbiting telescopes in a
unified form. A parallel initiative, called the
Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, is being planned by the
European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, and will
receive 4 million euros (US$3.6 million) in funding from the
European Commission.
Advances in observation techniques and technology double the
amount of data in astronomical databases each year. "This
project will reach across the astronomical community,"
predicts Alex Szalay, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins
University who is coordinating the US scheme with computer
scientist Paul Messina of the California Institute of
Technology.
