The NSF National Virtual Observatory TeraGrid Utilization Proposal to NRAC Multi-year , Large Research Collaboration

Astronomy faces a data avalanche. Breakthroughs in telescope, detector, and computer technology have allowed astronomical surveys to produce terabytes of images and catalogs. The NSF National Virtual Observatory (NVO) is a multiyear effort to build tools, services, registries, protocols, and standards that can extract the full knowledge content of these massive, multi-frequency data sets. We propose here to initiate the process whereby the computational resources of the TeraGrid can be combined with the NVO to enable astronomers to explore and analyze these new data sets in order to understand the physical processes that drive the formation and evolution of our universe. In this initial component of a multiyear effort we propose to use the TeraGrid to (1) expose massive data to massive computing through NVO protocols, (2) run representative applications to explore that data, (3) foster new projects in astronomy that use NVO services and TeraGrid resources, and (4) encourage new ways to use supercomputing facilities for science.