CODATA: Montreal September 30, 2002
Definition
The Virtual Observatory will be said to
exist when astronomers can successfully execute scientific queries that seamlessly cross archive
boundaries and wavelength boundaries,
can combine the returned datasets in a way that permits their joint processing, and can achieve this without the need to
understand engineering-level details
of the instrument that produced the returned datasets.
The
Virtual Observatory
•Discussions of online toolsets, grid
computing, distributed datasets, etc. are implementation
details.
•“Observatory” implies that the product is
pixel data
•Are analysis tools and catalogues legitimate
products?
•The Virtual Observatory
needs to be defined in terms of capabilities delivered to scientists (the users).