The massive amounts of data in astronomy and its increasing complexity require new tools for new kinds of research. Data mining, cross-correlation, and multi-wavelength archival research constitute an important part of "new" astronomy, and will play a critical role in new discoveries. The Virtual Observatory (VO) aims to provide "both infrastructure and super structure, and open up a new avenue of scientific research based on data discovery, exploration, fusion, and statistical analysis" (Hanisch & De Young 2008). Various web technologies and programming constructs, commonly used in our everyday activities, have been implemented into the underlying tools for the VO for easy implementation into a browser. In addition, APIs exist that allow for easy implementation into existing environments and client applications.
I will briefly review the main elements of the Virtual Observatory infrastructure of interest to the typical astronomical end user. I will also present a few short live demos of new features in the recently revamped and upgraded VO entry portal. The objective of the talk is to give the audience an introduction and tutorial such that individual explorations and investigations can be initiated afterward.
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~bkent/computing/