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The National Academy of Science Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey
Committee, in its new decadal survey entitled Astronomy and
Astrophysics in the New Millenium, recommends as a first
priority, the establishment of a National Virtual Observatory (NVO).
The NVO would link the archival data sets of space and ground-based
observatories, catalogs of multi-wavelength surveys, and the
computational resources necessary to support comparison and
cross-correlation amongh these resources. VO initiatives have
sprung world-wide culminating in the establishment of the
International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA).
With National Science Foundation
(NSF) funding, the CfA is collaborating with the National (NVO) and International (IVOA) Virtual Observatory (VO)
activities. Our focus is the design of the software that will allow
scientists and the public to access all the participant astronomy
archives and retrieve and analyze data simply. This software will be
based on a general description of all the astronomy data, which we
call the Data Model. At the CfA we are working on a local prototype
of the VO that will connect and make accessible through a unique
interface the CfA archives.
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