ASPCS
 
Back to Volume
Paper: Handling 3D data in the Virtual Observatory
Volume: 351, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XV
Page: 371
Authors: Chilingarian, I.; Bonnarel, F.; Louys, M.; McDowell, J.
Abstract: 3D spectroscopy is a modern and promising observational technique, that allows spectra to be obtained for a contiguous area of the sky, resulting in a 3-dimensional data structure or ‘data cube’ containing spectral and spatial information. During the last 15 years a considerable amount of 3D data was obtained on large optical, sub-mm and radio telescopes.
We are making an effort to define the standard way of describing and handling complex datasets, such as 3D data, in the VO framework. The most general and self-sufficient description of the observational and theoretical data will be handled eventually by the forthcoming Observation Data Model, and the physical characterisation of the data in the parameter space will be done using the Characterization DM, which is one of the most important parts.
We present the characterisation of the 3D datasets obtained with Integral-Field-Unit (IFU) spectrographs. The proposed metadata structure allows to query the different datasets' attributes, such as spectral and spatial sampling and resolution and retrieve the data using the power of extensible IVOA Simple Spectral Access Protocol (SSAP).
Back to Volume