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Paper: VIM: A Tool to Explore Your Sources
Volume: 394, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) XVII
Page: 173
Authors: Williams, R.D.
Abstract: VIM (Virtual Observatory Integration and Mining) is a web-based data retrieval and exploration application that assumes an astronomer has a list of ‘sources’ (positions in the sky), and wants to explore archival catalogs, images, and spectra of the sources, in order to identify, select, and mine the list. VIM does this through web forms, building a custom ‘data matrix’, whose rows are the uploaded source positions, and the columns show archival data – in fact any VO-registered catalog service can be used by VIM, as well as co-registered image cutouts from VO-image services, and spectra from VO-spectrum services. The user could, for example, show together: proper motions from GSC2, name and spectral type from NED, magnitudes and colors from 2MASS, and cutouts and spectra from SDSS. VIM can compute columns across surveys and sort on these (eg. 2MASS J magnitude minus SDSS g). For larger sets of sources, VIM utilizes the asynchronous Nesssi services from NVO, that can run thousands of cone and image services overnight.
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