VOcompliant visualizationof theoretical data

M. Molinaro(1), P. Manzato(1), F. Pasian(1), U. Becciani(2), A. Costa(2), P. Massimino(2),A. Grillo(5), M. Comparato(2), S. Cassisi(3), A. Pietrinferni(3), C. Gheller(4), R. Brunino(4)(1) INAF – Trieste Astronomical Observatory; (2) INAF – Catania Astronomical Observatory; (3) INAF – Teramo Astronomical Observatory; (4) CINECA; (5) Consorzio COMETAABSTRACT In the evolving scenario for the inclusion of theoretical and simulated data in the VO, some improvements within the Italian Theoretical VirtualObservatory (ITVO) project are presented. They include cosmological simulated data archives and services (at Trieste and Catania Astronomical Observatories andat the CINECA supercomputing centre in Bologna) and stellar simulations data archives and services (BaSTI, a Bag of Stellar Tracks and Isochrones, maintained at
the Teramo Astronomical Observatory). Following an upgrade in BaSTI database and a new Web service endpoint for VisIVOweb in Trieste some improvements indata visualization are presented: from new plots for BaSTI tracks emphasizing star evolution's key points to their comparison with observational data, from direct
3D visualization of galaxy clusters to their direct online data manipulation server side using the VO-compliant VisIVOWeb service. Finally we present a new unique
Web portal for the ITVO project under VObs.it, the Italian effort in the VO world, that collects all information regarding the various tokens of this theoretical virtualobservatory project that are spread all over Italy.
VisIVOWeb (see figures on the left, with, on top
the user home page, accessed after log on) is acollection of web based tools oriented to highquality 3D rendering of astronomical data
VisIVOWeb is available, at present,
at 3 sites (INAF-OACt & INAF-OATs
Italy, Universiry of Portsmout UK)
and will be soon
installed atCINECA (Bologna, Italy).
It relies on VisIVOServer as avisualization engine. This tool canbe used as well as a standalone
application, e.g. through shell orother kinds of scripting, thus
allowing
re-usable
task
implementation.
This is done, for example, at the ITVO site hosted at IA2(INAF-OATs, see figures on the right) to generate, at user
request, 3D server side previews of the galaxy clusters
simulations hosted at the archive.
This is only one of the various capabilities of VisIVOServer, which deals with data in various formats (VOTable,FITS, binary, ascii, csv, GADGET2 ... ), it can filter them in many ways and it can display results in fully
customizable ways.
Both VisIVOWeb and VisIVOServer are open source projects (GPL V2) hosted by SourceForge.
BaSTI database as been upgraded (on the left
you can see a sketch of the DB schema extension
added to the original DB) including more detailedphysical information.
The new data ingested into the DB, contained inso called Key Point files, are the full simulation
raw data before their normalization to BaSTItracks. This means finer track resolution and fullphysical data content available.
Following this DB extension a new preview
interface will be added to the BaSTI DB interface.
Here we present how it will look like (see theimage on the right and its description).
The present visualization service for BaSTI allows single simulation plots (similar to the blue line on this plot) from all data contained in the normalized simulation files. The
new preview will highlight the key physical points used during normalization from raw to final track (and isochrones) data and let the user be prompted for physicalquantities and values at those points (as detailed in the table up here).
Along with key points highlighting
we plan to add the preview thecapability to overplot data from
more simulations files but also
from user supplied data, thus
allowing on the site direct
simulation to observational datacomparison. Here below you cansee a plot with observational dataplotted along with BaSTI trackdata.
Comparison between the multiple Main
Sequence loci of the Globular Cluster
Omega Centauri (ACS data from Bedin
et al. 2009 (in preparation)) and thetheoretical sequences for low- and very
low-mass stars from BaSTI.

To collect together the ITVO efforts,
due to the various ITVO partners inItaly, and to give them direct accesstrough only one entry point a web
portal has been prepared.
The portal (you can see an image of it
here on the right) is hosted on theVObs.it web page (http://vobs.astro.it)
collects, after a short introduction, theresources available within the project
itself giving direct URL enpoints to theservices.
The idea is to slowly rearrange theweb portal, as most as possible, tomake it the main interface to ITVO
services, thus letting it to betransparent for the user wherever theservices and data are located.

This work has been developed within the framework of the EURO-VO AIDA project, funded by EU/FP7 and supported by INAF within the VObs.it initiative.