DAL sessions in Victoria

[Doug Tody]

Hi Silvia -

Thanks, that helps a bit to clarify things.

Note that the next version of SIAP will support queries by time and
spectral bandpass as well as position (among other things).  The main
reason for having a separate protocol for solar data would be if the
metadata required to describe solar data is significantly different.
Here in the US for example, the VSO (Virtual Solar Observatory)
has their own protocols which are tuned to their data.  At the most
basic level these are similar to what we have in IVOA, but there are
substantial differences, e.g., position refers to the solar surface or
the corona, the observed attributes may include things like acoustic
power or number of sunspots, and so forth.  The metadata returned to
describe an image or other observation would probably be substantially
different.  See for example http://vso.nso.edu/.

It is an interesting question for the IVOA whether its scope should
include solar and planetary data.  Currently we don't really address
this, and these disciplines tend to already have their own "VO" (at
least here in the US).  However, there is some contact and there are
occasional discussions about increasing interoperability or possibly
sharing technology.

     - Doug



On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Silvia Dalla wrote:

> You can find a first draft of the STAP protocol here:
> http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/s.dalla/astrogrid/strap.html
>
> best wishes,
> Silvia
>
> On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Doug Tody wrote:
>> Guy - Can you say more about this? Is this for time series data (light curves)
> or >for synoptic imagery? Assuming the latter, how does it differ from SIAP
> with a >time-based query, or slices through a time cube? - Doug
>>
>> On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Guy Rixon wrote:
>>> AstroGrid also have a time-based, SIAP-like protocol which we are producing
>>> for the Solar Physicists. It's called Simple Time-series Access Protocol.
>