NASA's Heliophysics Data Environment: Data Access

• The Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) has focused on delivering solar data files from many observatories at different locations using a unified interface. They deliver FITS files from SOHO, Yohkoh, TRACE, Hinode, STEREO, other spacecraft, and a large number of ground-based observatories. VSO has a simple browser interface and an API for direct access. This VO is the orginal "small box" building block of a VxO system. Recent additons to VSO include new repositories, preview movies, a "shopping cart," and links to descriptive information for repositories.


• The Virtual Space Physics Observatory (VSPO), now sponsored by NASA's Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) provides searches for and access to Space and Solar Physics data, models, plots, indices, images, and movies from over 100 observatories/spacecraft using the interfaces provided by the repositories (a "big, shallow box", rather than a VxO). The registry uses the SPASE data model, and the system is layered similarly to VSO. VSPO now allows direct file retrieval from many sources (making the box "deeper") using SOAP and other interfaces. It uses the VSO, SSCWeb, and CDAWeb APIs to provide direct access to large solar and space physics databases, and will be adding other means of access. A video introduction (39 MB) is available.
  
  
• Data centers such as NASA's Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF; many space-based space physics datasets), and Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC; spase-based solar physics data); NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC; including ground-based, GOES X-ray and magnetic field data, and cosmic ray datasets); DARTS (Japanese site with Geotail, Hinode, and many other datasets and a "Conjunction event finder" browse tool); and CDPP (French site with many space physics datasets), have large amounts of HP data available through web interfaces. All these groups are actively involved in expanding their reach through integration with VOs in various ways. The SPDF link, in particular, details SOAP interfaces to CDAWeb and SSCWeb (Earth-based orbits and complex conjunction tool), and the latter has an associated OrbitViewer tool.   VSPO uses the SPDF interface to provide users an alternate route to CDAWeb and SSC data from within VSPO that provides different features.  Also of note in this regard is a Data Translation Web Service that allows the user to translate many formats to others, including CDF, FITS, NetCDF, and HDF5 to various of the others of these or to ASCII. The Web Service is machine accessible, and can be invoked through a browser interface.
  
  
• The Global Auroral Imaging Access (GAIA) program is a multi-national VO that provides browsing, indexing, and access to ground and space based remote sensing of auroral precipitation. It currently formulates URLs of summary thumbnail images and keograms, and will at a later time provide access to full data sets. GAIA is the optical and riometer VO for the IPY ICESTAR/IHY program, and is currently being populated with summary data from the THEMIS-ASI, MIRACLE, CGSM/NORSTAR, and IRIS programs.


• NSF, through its Shared Cyberinfrastructure program, is funding a Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO) that will use ontologies to provide grid-enabled easy access to data in a way that works with the user's existing tools. The initial work and associated data portal focus on access to the CEDAR database and to Mona Loa solar images, but the effort will include access to a wide variety of data and tools, including the models produced by the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM).
  Two routes into the extensive CEDAR database of (mostly) ground-based measurements are provided by CEDARweb and Madrigal.


• The European Grid of Solar Observations (EGSO) is a grid-based data and service access system that has focused more on event-driven searchs than the VOs above. They have a number of services including a Query Builder, access to many Solar Event Catalogues, and a Solar Features Catalogue.


• Southwest Research Institute has a system (SDDAS) that delivers data directly from distributed repositories to a front-end application that offers many graphical and 3-D visualization capabilities. Web based systems are available for CLUSTER and Mars Express.
  
  
• A Japanese contribution to the VO environment is the Solar-Terrestrial data Analysis and Reference System (STARS) that uses a downloadable application (now Windows-only) to provides access to a large number of datasets and a variety of services such as coordinate conversion and orbit plotting.
  

• The Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO) is beginning to unite a number of distributed repositories for heliospheric data. They have included in their tasks assuring the data are well calibrated and complete for improved solar wind studies. 
  
  
• The Virtual Magnetospheric Observatory - GSFC (VMO) and the companion Virtual Magnetospheric Observatory - UCLA (a second VMO) are coordinating efforts to develop many SPASE descriptions as well as useful registry tools and middleware, and have prototype interfaces.
  
  
• Virtual Ionosphere, Thermosphere, Mesosphere Observatory (VITMO) has an existing prototype that delivers data based on parameter- and event-based searches. VITMO will incorporate a coincidence tool to aid searches involving space-based in situ and remotely sensed data along with ground-based observations.
  
  
• Virtual Radiation Belt Observatory (ViRBO) is currently ingesting datasets and developing data descriptions and a web portal; they are planning a strong connection to models. 


• SuperMAG will provide VO-like access to nearly all the ground-based magnetometer network, as well as to related auroral images.  
  
  
• A effort to form a Virtual Model Repository is beginning the complex task of integrating the data from complex, multi-dimensional models into the VO framework.


• The Virtual Energetic Particle Observatory (VEPO) will be augmenting the VHO resources with data on energetic particles from both inside and outside the heliosphere.


• Most recently, a Virtual Wave Observatory (VWO) was selected to unite datasets associated with radio and plasma wave phenomena in the magnetosphere and heliosphere.   As with VEPO, VWO will use much of the VHO "middleware" to simplify their efforts.  

• The Mission Independent Data Layer (MIDL) unifies many energetic particle and other datasets, producing a uniform (internal) format and a collection of grpahical and analysis tools that understand that format. A generalization of this would give us generic tools for cross-spacecraft and cross-discipline studies; this is currently in progress as part of the funded program.
  
  
• The Collaborative Sun-Earth Connector (CoSEC) will unite services of all sorts; CoSEC is currently focused toward solar applications using SolarSoft, but the tools are general. A nice example of its use is SolarSoft Latest Events. The Scientific Resouce Access System (SRAS) is developing similarly unifying software; they have been considering ontologies as well as the overall system architecture.
  

• The National Virtual Observatory for astronomy, which started the VO idea as a way of allowing anyone to have a "vitual telescope" to view any sky region at any wavelength using distributed repositories. This has become a large, international endeavor (see the IVOA site). Here is a good list of astromonical VO projects. Try "SkyView" and "Virtual Sky." Also of note is the UK AstroGrid project that plans to include solar and space physics along with astronomy.
  
  
• In the Earth Sciences, the OPeNDAP (child of DODS) project actively serves data from many disparate archives with many useful tools (such as data translation); their focus is more on syntax than semantics, but they have a large following.
  
  
• Other efforts that are underway or operating in Earth Sciences (ECHO, Nepster, GEON, ...). The ECHO effort has essentially made an API without an associated "default" interface; various groups are now using it for data access.
  

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