Enhancing access to the Archives.

The work on the three Cycles of accepted proposals has led to some interesting results. Efforts have been spent in the development of powerful and sophisticated search engines which enable the user to look at archives in a different way. In particular, these tools add 'extra dimensions' to the data stored in the archives, enabling searches based on physical parameters. As an example of these developments, you can try querator: a tool to search for multicolor images of astronomical objects. These tools are not only laying the operational foundation to the future Virtual Observatories, but point out their scientific and technical requirements. Early on, in fact, the ASTROVIRTEL team realized the need for a metadata layer to be added to current archives. This intermediate layer is meant to provide a uniform and standard description of data and instruments, as they evolve in time. Indeed, one of the striking characteristics of archives is their 'memory', which is much 'deeper' than that of operational sites. Think, for instance, about CCD specifications of detectors no more in use.

Publications.

"Using a reversed exposure time calculator for querying uncalibrated archives"
Bruno Voisin et. al., 2003, to appear in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XIII, ASP Conference Proceedings.

"Automated image reduction and analysis of images from multiple data archives"
S. O'Tuairisg et al., 2003, to appear in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XIII, ASP Conference Proceedings.

"Review of the ASTROVIRTEL experience at the end of its three approved cycles"
A. Micol, F. Pierfederici, P. Benvenuti, 2003, to appear in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XIII, ASP Conference Proceedings.

An Automated Image Processing and analysis pipeline for the ASTROVIRTEL virtual observatory prototype"
S. O Tuairisg, R. Butler, A Golden, B. Voisin, A. Shearer, 2003, pp. 159-167, Proceedings of the Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference, Sept. 3rd - 5th

"Detection of a red supergiant progenitor of a Type-II plateau supernova"
Smartt S.J., Maund J.R., Hendry M.A., Tout C.A., Gilmore G.F., Benn C.R., 2003, Science, submitted

"A Search of Outer trojans on ASTROVIRTEL Images" Planetary and Space Science journal
C. Barbieri, S. Marchi, A. Migliorini, S. Magrin, J. Skvarc, F. Marzari, H. Scholl, R. Albrecht
Planetary and Space Science journal, 2003, submitted

"Search for Trojans of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with ASTROVIRTEL"
C. Barbieri, S. Marchi, A. Migliorini, S. Magrin, F. Marzari, J. Skvarc, H. Scholl, R. Albrecht
Proceedings Memorie della Sait

"ASTROVIRTEL and the Search for Trojans of Outer Planets"
C. Barbieri, S. Marchi, A. Migliorini, S. Magrin, F. Marzari, J. Skvarc, H. Scholl, R. Albrecht
Meeting on Asteroids and Comets in Europe (MACE) 2003, Proceedings

"Search for Trojans of the Outer Planets"
C. Barbieri, S. Marchi, A. Migliorini, S. Magrin, F. Marzari, J. Skvarc, H. Scholl, R. Albrecht
Fifth italian workshop on Planetology, Proceedings

Mass limits for the progenitor star of supernova 2001du and other Type II-P supernovae
Smartt et al. 2003, MNRAS, 343, 735

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey -- I. Anatomy of galaxy clusters in the background of NGC 300
Schirmer, M., Erben, T., Schneider, P., Pietrzynski, G., Gieren, W., Carpano, S, Micol, A. & Pierfederici, F.: 2003, A&A 407, 869--888.

Anders, Peter, Fritze-von Alvensleben, Uta, & de Grijs, Richard 2003, Astrophysics and Space Science Evolutionary synthesis modelling of young star clusters in merging galaxies

Waddington, I. 2002, The Observatory AstroGrid and AstroVirtel

Star Cluster Formation and Evolution in Nearby Starburst Galaxies: I. Systematic Uncertainties. de Grijs R. et al., 2003, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300
Rich and Inspiring Experience with NGC 300 Images from the ESO Science Data Archive
ESO Press Photos 18a-h/02, T. Erben et al., Aug 2002

The Master Catalogue of stars towards the Magellanic Clouds. I. Multispectral surveys of the Large Magellanic Cloud. N. Delmotte et al., 2002, A&A, 396, 143

The Virtual Observatory as a Tool to Study Star Cluster Populations in Starburst Galaxies R. de Grijs, U. Fritze-v. Alvensleben, 2002, astro-ph/0207246

Detecting low amplitude periodicites with HIPPARCOS T. Kallinger & W. W. Weiss, 2002, A&A, 385, 533

On the Stability of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune Trojans H. Scholl and F. Marzari, 2001, Proceedings of the American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #33, #52.06

Star Formation in Violent and Normal Evolutionary Phases U. Fritze-v. Alvensleben, 2001, astro-ph/0112421, to appear in The Evolution of Galaxies. II. Basic building blocks, eds. M. Sauvage, G. Stasinska, L. Vigroux, D. Schaerer, S. Madden

Smartt S.J., in "From Twilight to Highlight: The Physics of Supernovae". Proceedings of the ESO/MPA/MPE Workshop held in Garching, Germany, 29-31 July 2002, p. 27.

Smartt S.J., in "A Massive Star Odyssey: From Main Sequence to Supernova", Proceedings of IAU Symposium #212, held 24-28 June 2001 in Lanzarote, Canary island, Spain. Edited by Karel van der Hucht, Artemio Herrero, and Esteban, Csar. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2003., p.423

Detecting the progenitors of core collapse supernovae
Smartt S.J., Astrophysics and Space Science, v. 281, Issue 1, p. 187-190 (2002).

Virtual Telescope Observes Record-Breaking Asteroid,
ESO Press Photos 27a-b/01

Multiwavelength cross-identification of stars toward the Magellanic clouds
N. Delmotte et al, 2001, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4477

Querator: an advanced multi-archive data mining tool
F. Pierfederici, 2001, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4477

The nature of the progenitor of the Type II-P supernova 1999em
S. Smartt et al, 2001, ApJ, 565, 1089

An Upper Mass Limit for the Progenitor of the Type II-P Supernova SN 1999gi
Smartt et al., 2001, ApJ, 556, L29