Virtual Observatories and Virtual Grids: The Interplay in Fully Exploiting Solar-Terrestrial Data

Mauro Messerotti, INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, and Department of Physics, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

From the point of view of the final users, such as e.g. research scientists, Space Weather forecasters, or educators, the major goals provided by a Virtual Observatory (VO) at an increasing level of refinement and architectural complexity are respectively: a) the access to geographically distributed data and information resources in a user-transparent way; b) the capability of performing complex searches on data via simplified web interfaces and eventually of retrieving the relevant data; c) the possibility of remotely running codes to process the data and of retrieving the results. The cited features allow the full exploitation of e.g. solar-terrestrial data, but require an accurate selection of the architecture of the system as well as of the levels of connectivity. In this framework, the Virtual Grid (VGrid) architecture can play a significant role in pushing VO's capabilities to the limit. In this work, we present the main requirements of a prototype system at the highest abstraction level and compare them with the existing resources in the field of solar-terrestrial physics.

Keywords: Virtual Observatory, Virtual Grid, Solar-Terrestrial Physics