What is the National Virtual Observatory?
The National Virtual Observatory (NVO) is a new research project whose goal is to make all astronomy data in the world quickly and easily accessible by anyone. The NVO was created to solve two difficult problems that astronomers currently face in doing their research. This document describes what the problems are and how the NVO will solve them. What happens to old data? How do scientists get data from all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum? Solution: the NVO Problem #1: Getting New Results from Old Data For thousands of years, astronomers have been studying the sky. They started looking at the sky with their eyes, creating star charts and maps. In the 1600s, astronomers began using telescopes, allowing them to see many more stars and galaxies. Over the past several hundred years, telescopes have gotten more and more powerful, allowing astronomers to see millions more stars and galaxies. When computers were invented, astronomers began to use computers to control their telescop
