Upcoming Talk: Virtual Observatory, and Information-Rich Astronomy in the 21st Century

You’re invited to a talk by George Djorgovski from CalTech, titled “Virtual Observatory, and Information-Rich Astronomy in the 21st Century.”  The abstract is below.

Date:  Friday, June 27

Time:  8:00 AM PDT (SL Time)

Location:  The Galaxy Dome floating above the sim named Spaceport Bravo

SLURL:   http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Bravo/117/66/278

Like most other sciences, astronomy is being transformed by an exponential growth of data, driven by the progress in information technology.  Large digital  sky surveys are generating many Terabytes (and soon Petabytes) of information, of an ever increasing complexity.  This data richness is enabling us to ask new kinds of questions about the universe, but it also poses significant challenges.  The Virtual Observatory (VO) concept is a response to these challenges and opportunities: it is a general, distributed, web-based research environment for astronomy with massive and complex data sets and numerical simulations.  VO is a new type of a scientific organization for the era of exponential growth of information and computation.  It enables a broad access to data and research tools, as well as education and public outreach.

All are welcome.  Feel free to ask questions or make comments.

This talk is part of a series of popular talks produced in association with the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA).  For more information, see the MICA website.

Photo Credit:  observatory by mirrorgirl on Flickr

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