The Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) project conducted a research and demonstration programme on the scientific requirements and technologies necessary to build a virtual observatory for European astronomy. The AVO has been jointly funded by the

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(under FP5 - Fifth Framework Programme) with six European organisations participating in a three-year Phase-A work programme, valued at 5 million euro. The partner organisations were the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in

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, the European Space Agency (ESA), AstroGrid (funded by PPARC as part of the UK's E-Science programme), the CNRS-supported Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS), the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, the CNRS-supported TERAPIX astronomical data centre at the Institut d'Astrophysique in Paris, France, and the Jodrell Bank Observatory of the Victoria University of Manchester, United Kingdom. The Phase A program focussed its effort in the following areas: *A detailed description of the science requirements for the AVO was constructed, following the experience gained in a smaller-scale science demonstration program called ASTROVIRTEL (Accessing Astronomical Archives as Virtual Telescopes). *The difficult issue of data and archive interoperability was addressed by new standards definitions for astronomical data and trial programmes of "joins" between specific target archives within the project team. *The necessary GRID and database technologies were assessed and tested for use within a full AVO implementation.

References

*
Virtual Observatories initiatives worldwide, State of the projects 2006 ( www.Interquanta.biz/vos )
highlights that EURO-VO is the continuation from AVO as a Phase-B deployment of an operational VO in Europe. *

External links

*{{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060602131405/http://www.euro-vo.org/avo/ , title=Astrophysical Virtual Observatory or AVO , date=2006-06-02 *Its continuation projec
EURO-VO
or European Virtual Observatory

Euro-VO The European Virtual Observatory or EURO-VO project aims at deploying an operational virtual observatory in Europe. Its objectives are technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reprod ...

AVO at ESA/Hubble
Virtual observatories Organizations based in Europe