[AstroNet] What's up at the Observatory this Saturday

[Thembela Mantungwa]

Hi there, 

S.A. Astronomical Observatory will have a free public talk on Saturday, August 27 at 20h00 sharp. Dr. Sudhanchu Barway will talk about "Virtual Observatories -The cosmos from your desktop" After the talk, there will be stargazing (weather permitting), tours of the library, the McClean museum and telescope. Visitors are advised to arrive at least at 19h30, this will give them time to park and find the venue. 

Abstract of the talk: 

Modern digital sky surveys, large ground and space based telescopes are generating many Terabytes (and soon Petabytes) of information with an ever increasing complexity. This data richness is enabling us to ask new kinds of questions about the universe, however, it also poses significant challenges. The Virtual Observatory (VO) is a response to these challenges and opportunities.It is a general distributed web-based environment for astronomy. Virtual Observatory is a powerful medium for ameture astronomers as it brings vast astronomical resources on their desktop along with very easy to use, but highly sophisticated techniques, tools and applications. The goal of Virtual Observatory is to introduce the knowledge and beauty of the sky hidden behind the huge amount of data. 


-- 
Regards 

Thembela Mantungwa 
S.A. Astronomical Observatory 
Tel: 021 460 9319 
Fax: 086 612 7502 
Mob: 071 105 0109 
Email: tm at saao.ac.za 
Website: www.saao.ac.za / www.salt.ac.za 


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