The astronomy research community is about to become the
beneficiary of huge multi-terabyte databases from a host of sky
surveys. The rich and diverse information content within this "virtual sky" and the array of results to be derived therefrom will far exceed the current capacity of data search and research tools. The new digital surveys have the potential of facilitating a wide range of scientific discoveries about the Universe! To enable this to happen, the astronomical community is embarking on an ambitious endeavor, the creation of a National Virtual Observatory (NVO). This will in fact develop into a Global Virtual Observatory. To facilitate the new type of science enabled by the NVO, new techniques in data mining and knowledge discovery in large databases must be developed and deployed, and the next generation of astronomers must be trained in these techniques. This activity will benefit greatly from developments in the fields of information technology, computer science, and statistics. Aspects of the NVO initiative, including sample science user scenarios and user requirements will be presented. The value of scientific data mining and some early test case results will be discussed in the context of the speaker's research interests in colliding and merging galaxies.
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) spacecraft will be used to measure the proper motions for a sample of ~30 nearby galaxies. At this time there are no proper motion measurements of galaxies beyond the satellite systems of the Milky Way. With the capability of measuring absolute positions to 4 mas (microarcsecond) accuracy and a five-year baseline, SIM will be able to measure proper motions as small as 10 km/s over the Local Group and 40 km/s at 4 Mpc. The motion of each galaxy will be monitored by targeting 5-10 stars that are brighter than 20th magnitude. SIM measurements will lead to knowledge of the full 6-dimensional position and velocity vectors of each galaxy. In conjunction with gravitational flow modeling, improved total mass measurements of individual galaxies and the fractional contribution of dark matter to galaxies of the Local Group will be obtained. The project includes development of theoretical methods for orbital calculations.
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