Who We Are?

Virtual Observatory (VO) is a data-intensively online astronomical research and education environment, taking advantages of advanced information technologies to achieve seamless, global access to astronomical information.

The power of the World Wide Web is its transparency. It is as if all the documents in the world are inside your PC. The idea of the Virtual Observatory is to achieve the same transparency for astronomical data and other related information (Quinn et al. 2004).

Chinese Virtual Observatory (China-VO) is the national VO project in China initiated in 2002 by Chinese astronomical community leading by National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. China-VO became a member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) in 2002.

R&D Focuses for the China-VO include the following 5 fields:

  • China-VO Platform
  • Unified Access to On-line Astronomical Resources and Services
  • VO-ready Projects and Facilities
  • VO-based Astronomical Research Activities
  • VO-based Public Education

Partners

Collaborators

  • Computer Network Information Center, CAS (Beijing)
  • Purple Mountain Astro Obs (Nanjing)
  • Shanghai Astro Obs (Shanghai)
  • Yunnan Astro Obs
  • Tsinghua Univ


External Collaborators

  • JHU, MSR, Caltech, IUCAA, CDS, ICRAR (Australia), NAOJ (Japan)…

The full list for the China-VO personnel is available here.