IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (TM47)

Thursday December 13 @ 16.00 UT (17.00 CET)

Contents

Logistics

Telecon

Agenda TM47

Roll Call and Agenda (MA)
Minutes of FM46S and FM46
Review of Actions
Project Reports - Significant Events Only
Report of the TCG status (SG)
Approval of new IVOA Recommendation(s) [Standing Item]
Education IG Chair and Vice Chair
Data Curation and Preservation Vice Chair
VAO Board meeting and its impact on VAO priorities
May 2013 Interop
Future Interops
Date of next meeting
AOB
Summary of Actions (MA)

Reports from the Projects

Argentina - NOVA

ArVO

AstroGrid

Australia-VO

BRAVO

China-VO

China-VO and AstroInformatics 2012 was held successfully in Yichang from November 29 to December 1, 2012. About 90 representatives from astronomical observatories, universities, institutes and companies across China attended the workshop. This is the 11th annual workshop organized by the China-VO project. And this year is the 10th anniversary of the China-VO. Numbers of attendees, involved institutes, and submitted talks reached new records, which means a solid community in AstroInformatics has been formed in China. Slides and more information about the annual workshop are available at the website of the workshop.

CVO

Euro-VO

The Euro-VO Science Advisory Committee met in Paris on Nov. 23rd to discuss in particular CoSADIE work programme.

The CoSADIE project organizes a School on scientific usage of the VO in Madrid, 2013, Feb. 5-7 (http://www.laeff.cab.inta-csic.es/projects/cosadie/main/index.php). It is expected to gather mainly PhD students and post-docs working in European countries. A Technology Forum will also be organized in Edinburgh in the coming months to discuss progress and collaborations on VO technical matters. A Data Centre Forum will be organised in Heidelberg in June 2013.

Preparation for the kick-off of the Research Data Alliance continues, with in particular a Workshop organized in Amsterdam by the European e-Infrastructure Reflexion Group on Nov. 3-4 (http://www.e-irg.eu/e-irg-events/workshop-3-4-december.html). F. Genova presented a contribution on "Lessons learnt from building the International Virtual Observatory" in a Working Group devoted to discuss RDA governance.

ESAVO

VOSpec version 6.5 released mid October, with the following:

Accesses early photometry services from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) and CDS VizieR.
Spectra from Simple Spectral Access (SSAP) services can now be combined with photometric data from VizieR and NED databases to build combined Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) that fulfil new science cases.

France VO

Working Groups of the France VO Specifc Action continued to organize meetings, with topics which take into account its multi-disciplinary coverage. A very well attended meeting was organised to discuss "New interfaces and new interactions" on Nov. 26th (http://www.france-ov.org/twiki/bin/view/GROUPEStravail/InterfacesInteractionsMeeting1) in Paris (IAP). The Workflow Working Group met in Meudon (Observatoire de Paris) on Nov. 29th ((http://www.france-ov.org/twiki/bin/view/GROUPEStravail/WorkflowReunion8, with among the topics PDL, AstroTaverna, Wf4Ever, workflows in HELIO and Europlanet and in VAMDC. The annual meeting of the "OV-Planeto" Working Group will be held on Dec. 10th in Paris (Paris Observatory).

Technological work on the development of VO standards and tools continues in several Observatories, in particular in Strasbourg and Paris, with also involvment of the Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées for the planetary and heliospheric VO.

GAVO

HVO

VObs.it

The VObs.it budget for 2012-13, provided by INAF, is available: although slightly reduced, it allows to cover the salaries for people under contract. Staffing can be estimated around 5 FTE.

The VO workshop (INAF HQ, Rome, 4-6 Dec) was attended by about 40 people. Lots of interest for the VO was shown by neighbouring communities, especially planetology, radio astronomy, high-energy astrophysics (ASDC). The welcome address was given by the INAF President G.F.Bignami, and the Director of Science G.Vettolani chaired the round table on the future of VO on the first day. On the second and third day hack-a-thon sessions, mostly hands-on, were held on publishing data and using the VO, respectively.

VObs.it keeps also active in the following areas: implementing embedded access to the grid and cloud as part of data centre services (OGF meetings are regularly supported); preparing tools for access to the VO for educational/outreach purposes; maintaining an upgrading VO-Dance, a tool designed to allow users and data centers to easily create VO compliant services; developing VO-aware data mining tools; developing VO and grid-enabled 3-D visualisation tools; coordinating the Education IG and the IVOA-OGF Liaison Group.

Japan-VO

Japan VO has released a query interface to the ALMA SV data at http://jvo.nao.ac.jp/portal/top-page.do . The quesr interface is accompanied with a WebQL system and a data handling application, Vissage. These functionalities were presented at the previous ADASS conference in Urbana/Champaign, together with its demonstration.

A computer system to accommodate Japan-VO is now being replaced. The new system will become in operation from March 2013 on, which contains data archives for Subaru (Suprime CAM, Hyper Suprime CAM and others), ALMA, solar data and other radio data.

Ukraine VO

VAO

RVO

South Africa VO

SVO

(Since Oct 2012)

Manpower: 10 FTEs. The SVO Thematic Network (people from Spanish institutes with interest in the VO) is composed of almost 200 participants from more than 30 labs.

Outreach:

- Invited talk at the Spanish meeting of amateur astronomers (http://www.congresoastronomia.es/conferencias.html)

Education:

- The use case "Distance to the Crab Nebulae" available from the HoU-Spain web page.

- Master course at Universidad Complutense de Madrid: "The Virtual Observatory". Oct-Nov 2012