<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'>Hi there,<br><br>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.<br><br>Abstract of the talk:<br><br>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. <br><br><div><span name="x"></span>-- <br>Regards<br><br>Thembela Mantungwa<br>S.A. Astronomical Observatory<br>Tel: 021 460 9319<br>Fax: 086 612 7502<br>Mob: 071 105 0109<br>Email: tm@saao.ac.za<br>Website: www.saao.ac.za / www.salt.ac.za<br><span name="x"></span><br></div><br></div></body></html>