Karen Tian

The Virtual Solar Observatory: status and initial operational experience

The Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) is a bottom-up grassroots approach to the development of a distributed data system for use by the solar physics community. The beta testing version of the VSO was released in December 2003. Since then it has been tested by approximately 50 solar physicists. In this paper we will present the status of the project, a summary of the communitys experience with the tool, and an overview of the lessons learned.

The SOHO Solar Oscillations Investigation on the Web

Abstract The Solar Oscillations Investigation (SOI) is an international project to study the Suns interior using data from the Michelson Doppler Imager on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the newly developing techniques of the field of helioseismology. We have committed to using the World-Wide Web not only to provide information and public data, but as an active tool for defining science objectives, planning and conducting the mission operations and attendant data processing, as well as distribution of data to team members. SOI is organized into a number of Science Teams with responsibility for various aspects of the mission. As the team members are widely dispersed geographically, the Web will be used to provide them with operational views into all aspects of the data flow from observations through the production of organized calibrated datasets. The same tools will be available to team members and guest investigators conducting individual science investigations.

A Solar Information Center on the Web

Abstract The Solar Information Center (SIC), under development at Stanford University, provides a Web entry point to a range of services specific to the Solar Physics research community. A key design goal is to allow its databases to be filled and maintained by users with a minimum of central management. The SIC provides four basic information services: SolarData, SolarMail, SolarNews, and a Bulletin Board. SolarData, designated as the Solar Physics discipline node for the NASA Space Physics Data System, is a community-based active catalogue for solar data archives. Institutions and individuals are free to register any publicly accessible data holdings, and users are provided with a quick query service to locate data of interest from among the registered sets. SolarMail is a widely-used electronic mail forwarding service and personal information database for Solar Physics, and the SIC allows users to interactively open and maintain accounts and to query the database. SolarNews is an electronic newsletter for the Solar community produced in cooperation with the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society. It is distributed through SolarMail and the SIC maintains an on-line archive. Non-archival announcements can be posted freely to a community Bulletin Board on the SIC.