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Designing An Astrophysical Virtual Observatory
SevenTowers writes: "'The Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) Project is a Phase-A, three year study for the design and implementation of a virtual observatory for European astronomy. A virtual observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperating data archives and software tools which utilize the internet to form a scientific research environment in which astronomical research programs can be conducted. In much the same way as a real observatory consists of telescopes, each with a collection of unique astronomical instruments, the VO consists of a collection of data centres each with unique collections of astronomical data, software systems and processing capabilities.' The article on their site goes into more detail. It's good to see that what the internet was designed for is still a working model."
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The amount of money being spent by the European and American government in this area is huge (100's of millions) with some of the best academic software brains in the world looking at it. Just because its been mentioned before doesn't make it less relevant and may help in its uptake.