The Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO)

1
The Virtual Solar Observatory
(VSO)

• Huairou Solar Observating Station
• National Astronomical Observatories
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
  
• Ganghua Lin

2
Outline

• What is VSO
• Why is VSO
• Related Projects
• VSOs initial Components
• Querying methods----before,now
• Meaning for Us to Join VSO
• Our basis
• Arckitecture of CVSO
• Related Web sites

3
What is VSO?

• The VSO is a new tool for investigating the
  physics of the Sun and its impact on the Earth
  environment. It would provide users with a common
  interface to an integrated system of distributed
  data archives (both space- and ground-based) and
  analysis systems, thereby enabling data
  exploration and accelerating the scientific
  process.
• The VSO will address one of the central
  challenges Of solar research the need to locate,
  correlate, absorb, and analyze data from a wide
  array Of scientific instruments that measure the
  Sun on spatial and temporal scales that range
  over seven orders of magnitude.

4
What is VSO?

• This observatory is virtual because it exists
  only in the form of masses of information stored
  in computer systems.

5
Why Is VSO

• The Sun exhibits complex phenomena, such as
  flares, that pose important challenges to our
  understanding of the universe, Solar structure
  varies on time scales from microseconds to
  decades and on horizontal and vertical spatial
  scales ranging from 10 to 106 km.

6
Why VSO

• Understanding solar structure, and ultimately
  predicting solar behavior, requires the
  correlation of many types of observations. These
  observations, which cover the entire electro
  magnetic spectrum as well as energetic particles,
  cannot be obtained with any single instrument or
  indeed at any single observatory. Thus, the data
  are stored in a myriad of locations, in dozens of
  formats, and analyzed by numerous applications.

7
Why VSO

• A researcher who wishes to combine several
  data sets faces the tasks of finding the data
  somewhere in the world, searching each set for
  the observations that most nearly fulfill the
  precise scientific requirements, arranging to
  have the data delivered, and mastering the
  various storage formats and calibrations.
• These labor-Intensive steps must be completed
  before any analysis can even begin, and have
  deterred many researchers from performing studies
  that would provide valuable new insights into
  solar structure and the mechanisms of solar
  activity and variability.

8
Why is VSO

• In spite of the difficulty of using such data
  systems, solar physics and the others have long
  exploited the scientific richness of
  cross-correlative studies.
• This process of locate, correlate, absorb, and
  analyze data is extraordinarily time-consuming
  and labor-intensive yet it is pursued.
• The VSO will greatly increase the power and pace
  of the correlative studies needed to address
  fundamental challenges such as predicting
  geomagnetic storms, understanding solar
  irradiance variations and their effect on the
  Earth environment, detecting active regions below
  the solar surface before they cause solar
  activity, and understanding the generation of the
  solar wind,etc.

9
Related projects

• EGSO (European Grid of Solar Observations). It is
  taking a more highly structured approach, with
  formal Work Packages and a more ambitious set of
  design goals.
• SEC (the Solar Event Catalogue) server, which
  hosts event catalogues (flares, CME, etc.) and
  indices gathered from a number of sources and
  updated daily.
• SFC (Solar Feature Catalogue) for sunspots,
  active regions and filaments.
• DSO (Database of Solar Observatories) contains
  detailed information about all instruments and
  observatories

10
(No Transcript)
11
Related projects

• Scientific Use Cases such as, Flare impulsive
  phase energy deposition, determine the
  conditions that lead to the onset of a flare,
  solar wind acceleration in the corona, comparison
  of coronal and in-situ solar wind diagnostics,
  phenomena associated with CME onset, etc

12
Related projects

• NASA Living With a Star (LWS) There is a broader
  effort under way to provide a data environment
  for NASAs Living With a Star program. Ideally,
  the VSO should plug and play with such a
  system.
• CoSec (the Collaborative Sun-Earth Connector),
• VSPO (Virtual Space Plasma Observatory),
• VHO (Virtual Heliospheric Observatory)

13
VSOs initial Components

• The VSO is a scalable environment for searching,
  integrating, and analyzing databases distributed
  over the Internet. Initially, It would comprise a
  federated system of solar archives containing
  data from space- and ground-based instruments,
  from US and international sources, from NSF- and
  NASA-funded groups. A key element of the VSO is
  an integrated data-mining and analysis capability
  that can be applied both across and within
  databases.

14
VSOs initial Components

• NSO(National Solar Observatory) spectral
  atlases, magnetograms (photospheric and
  chromospheric), Dopplergrams, synoptic maps
  (magnetic field and other parameters), coronal
  emission-line scans, GONG, (Global Oscillations
  Network Group) and GONG, and SOLIS (Synoptic
  Optical Long-term Investigation of the Sun)
• SDAC (Solar Data Analysis Center) a variety of
  space mission and ancillary data SOHO,TRACE,
  Yohkoh, CGROBATSE solar flare data, GOES soft
  X-ray photometry, SMM, OSO-7 raster images,
  Solar-B (from 2005), STEREO (from 2005)
• Stanford University solar group SOHO MDI, Wilcox
  Solar Observatory magnetograms,TON
  helioseismology database, Mt. Wilson 60-ft. tower
  data, LOWL helioseismology database

15
Querying methods-----------before
16
Querying methods-----------now
17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
Meaning for us to Join VSO

• To look toward international front edge, put
  limited energy in advantaged project.
• This would brings us both many new chances and
  challenges. Through the bridge to the VSO,
  Chinese solar physical scientist will enjoy
  latest technologies and astronomy achievement of
  the worldwide, meanwhile also share our own
  sources with international colleagues.

22
Our basis

• Data
• photospheric magnetogram and filtergram1987.6.12-
  --- now
• chromospheric magnetogram1987.6.12----now
• H-alpha filtergram1991----now
• H-beta filtergram1987.6.12----now
• full disk H-alpha image1991----now
• full disk CaII image1991----1997, upgrading now
• full disk photospheric magnetogram 1991----1997,
  upgrading now
• Data processing
• the existence of an extensive software
  package created by our experiment group

23
Our basis

• Network fiber line in huairou station
• security system firewall, antivirus,etc
• Data automatically backup function
• Now we are implementing conversion from huairou
  data model to VSO Data Model

24
Arckitecture of CVSO
Users lever
assembling level
Resource level
Construction level
25
Related Web sites

• http//solarvirtual.org
• http//www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/grid/egso/software/

26
Thanks for attend the report!