The Virtual Observatory (VO) is a network of Computers holding astronomically relevant information talking common protocols. If this sounds boring, start exploring at the GAVO home page.
On ARI's Unix cluster, there is some pre-installed software to make life with the VO more enjoyable. It lives in /usr/local/vo_bin.
To be able to use it, your shell needs a little setup. If you are using bash (which is likely unless you ordered something different), say
. /usr/local/vo_bin/vosetup.bash
If you use a derivative of the C shell, the incantation is
source /usr/local/vo_bin/vosetup.tcsh
If you want to make this change permanent, find out what shell you are using and follow the pertaining of the following to recipes:
Bash sources a file named .bashrc from your home when it opens an interactive shell. So, edit (or create) that file and append
. /usr/local/vo_bin/vosetup.bash
to it. This way, you will have the VO tools in xterms and similar places. However, they will not usually be available when you ssh into the machine, because ssh normally gives you a login shell that sources, among others, .bash_profile rather than .bashrc. So, the easiest way to fix this is to edit or create the file .bash_profile in your home and write
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc fi
there -- this causes the shell to read .bashrc from your home if it exists.
The line
source /usr/local/vo_bin/vosetup.tcsh
must go into your ~/.cshrc. Since cshrc is sourced by login shells as well, no further precautions should be necessary unless you tweaked something. Note that the csh version of the setup script will in general receive less love and caring than the bash version; I rely on you to report when it's broken.
The following software is available on our cluster. Contact Markus to have additional software installed or for any questions you might have that are somewhat related to the VO: msdemlei@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
Note that most of the programs mentioned here can communicate with each other using a protocol called SAMP. Just run several of them in parallel to try it.
To work with VOTables, topcat is the program of choice: Browse, edit, plot, whatever. More info is available at http://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/.
This is TOPCAT for the command line, and you can even script it using python. Try stilts --help or check out the documentation at http://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/~mbt/stilts/.
Image processing for the VO -- this is what you may know from CDS' web pages, except it is freed from the confines of stuffy browser java plugins. More information at http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/java/nph-aladin.pl?frame=downloading; there also is a PDF Manual detailing advanced operations like scripting.
A tool to work with spectra, partly developed at ARI -- so, if you have ideas or critique, just come over and have a chat with us. See http://star-www.dur.ac.uk/~pdraper/splat/splat-vo/.
Another tool to locate and analyze spectra. See http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/specview.
VO Desktop was a nice interface to the registry, and it also allowed all-VO queries. It still largely works, but it shows its age. These days, we'd recommend the ARI-developed WIRR to query the VO registry