Italian Theoretical Virtual Observatory - ITVO

The aim of the Virtual Observatory has expanded from seeking interoperability among astronomical catalogue and archive systems to including also access to analysis tools, computational services and numerical simulations. As a matter of fact, beside the observational data, there is also a huge amount of theoretical data generated by computer simulations that can be useful if published in Virtual Observatory compatible form.

Therefore, considerable interest has been shown in including products of theoretical research. A data model (SimDB) for theoretical data is being designed. At the same time, an interim Simulation Data Access Protocol (SimDAP) as part of the Data Access Layer provides, through negotiation between the client and the theoretical dataset service, a standardized access mechanism to distributed theoretical data objects.

In this Web site there is the first integration within the Virtual Observatory of a set of theoretical data structured with a prototype of the SimDAP data access protocol. Our resource provides not only access to simulation data stored in a dedicated archive but also, interfacing web services, a visualization service and the possibility to extract a number of astronomical observables. We focussed our work on a set of numerical simulations of galaxy clusters produced with the GADGET2 code, Enzo and FLY and also of a set of evolutionary model data obtained running the FRANEC code. We show the possibility of visualizing theoretical results with VO-enabled astronomical tools, of comparing the results with astronomical observations.

The ITVO spread archive is part of a joint collaboration between Italian Insitute for Astrophysics (INAF) and CINECA supercomputing center, developed iside the EURO-VO project as VO-TECH, VO-DCA and VO-AIDA.

ITVO theoretical data server

At the moment  there  are four server available for request of data and services on that, they are:

• ITVO@Trieste( Trieste Astronomical Observatory);
• ITVO@Catania  (Catania Astronomical Observatory);
• ITVO@CINECA (Bologna);
• BaSTI (Teramo Astronomical Observatory).

The data archive presently in the first three consists of the outcome of a set of high and cosmological simulations run with the three popular codes:

• Gadget-2 , N-body + SPH code;
  
• Enzo , N-body AMR code;
  
• FLY,  N-body code;

and in the BaSTi server there is the outut of evolutionary stellar model produced with code:

• FRANEC (Frascati Raphson Newton Evolutionary Code).

  ITVO theoretical data services

• Download,
  
• Preview, perform using VisIVO and Aladin that are VO tools;
  
• Cutout, select end perform by VisIVO tool;
  
• Graphics, produced using STILTS a VO tool;
  
• VOTable, creation of this VO standard data format.
• VisIVOWeb reachable at:

1.  http://itvo.oact.inaf.it/visivoserver2/ of ITVO@Catania;
2.  http://palantir7.oats.inaf.it/visivoweb/ of ITVO@Trieste;
3.  soon at ITVO@CINECA.