Science with the Virtual Observatory beyond data mining.
Igor Chilingarian \& Ivan Zolotukhin
LERMA \& Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University
Résumé :
{ After several years of intensive technological development Virtual
Observatory resources reached a level of maturity sufficient for their routine
scientific exploitation. Most VO and VO-enabled studies carried out up-to-now
use VO only to perform data mining. In our talk we will present three
VO-science projects going beyond data mining and will run live demonstrations
making use of VO resources.
(1) We have used a VO-fed workflow to automatically analyse large amount of
HST data and discovered a population of compact elliptical (M32-like) galaxies
in nearby clusters. Some of these galaxies were later observed with the 6-m
telescope to confirm their membership in the clusters, some others were
confirmed from literature data. We have performed dedicated numerical
simulations to model their origin by the tidal stripping.
(2) We have performed the cross-identification of three large sources of
photometric data: GALEX GR4 (UV), SDSS DR7 (optical), UKIDSS DR5 (NIR) and
compiled a FUV-to-NIR catalogue of spectral energy distributions of nearby
galaxies (0.03
(3) The GalMer database is a part of the Horizon project, providing access to
a library of TreeSPH simulations of galaxy interactions. We have developed a
set of value-added tools related for data visualisation and post-processing
with available VO-interfaces, including the spectrophotometric modelling of
galaxy properties using PEGASE.2 stellar population models, making GalMer the
most advanced resource providing online access to the results of numerical
simulations. These tools allow direct comparison of simulations with imaging
and spectroscopic observations.
Presentation of these three examples aim at stimulating usual astronomers to
carry out VO-enabled research on everyday basis. Although minor infrastructura
difficulties still exist, VO research beyond data mining is already possible.
We foresee growing amount of VO-powered studies to arrive in near future.}
