The Spanish Virtual Observatory

Although astronomical archives constitute a basic tool for modern Astrophysics as revealed by their intensive usage (in particular for multiwavelength astronomy), it is also true that the efficiency in the scientific exploitation of the available information is seriously limited by two major facts.

• Archives lack of a real interoperability among them.
• Methodological bottlenecks: The "classical" methods of retrieving and analyzing astronomical data do not scale with the exponential growth driven by the new instruments and telescopes.

The Virtual Observatory (VO,www.ivoa.net) is an international project whose main aim is to solve this situation by

• The creation of a federation of astronomical archives that, with the implementation of new technologies and standards, provides an easy and efficient access to the astronomical data. ("Data grid")
• Development and implementation of analysis tools by the Data Centres holding the data ("Service grid"): Data mining, as a way to perform an efficient and systematic study of the vast amount of data available from the future federation of astronomical archives, constitutes one of the key activities for the Virtual Observatory and where the greatest scientific benefits are expected to come from.

Although VO is an emerging project still in its developing phase (the phase-A of the major contributors to the VO, started in 2001) it is considered both from the technical and scientific point of view a basic requirement for the astrophysical research and the framework where to settle in the short-term the astronomical archive-related activities. The biggest data providers (NASA, ESA, ESO, ...) have understood the importance of this initiative and are already displaying their contents under the VO requirements.

The need of the Virtual Observatory has been also understood by the National Plan for Astronomy and Astrophysics which includes it as one of its priority research lines. In this context, the project entitled "SVO: the Spanish Virtual Observatory" whose major goal is to ensure an efficient coordination of the lines of work of the Spanish astronomical community in the VO framework, is being developed by different Spanish institutes.

In this presentation I will summarize the current status and the future objectives of the Virtual Observatory both at national and international level.