ESA Science & Technology - The European Grid of Solar Observations

In order to address this strategic problem, a consortium comprising 11 institutes from Europe (and the US), led by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London proposed EGSO (The European Grid of Solar Observations) to the European Commission. EGSO is funded as a Grid test-bed under the Information Society Technologies (IST) thematic priority of the Commission's Fifth Framework Programme (FP5). EGSO addresses the generic problem on how to access a large distributed heterogeneous dataset and it aims at establishing a Virtual Observatory using Grid technology. The project started in March 2002 and was funded for 3 years. The demonstration already satisfies fundamental requirements of the EGSO system and when complete the project will change the way scientists analyze solar data.

One of the major hurdles in the analysis of solar data is identifying observations that match a user's search criteria and retrieving those that are required. Photons and particles that originate from different regions of the solar surface and atmosphere result from a range of physical processes. Many solar physics problems require the use of an as wide a variety of multi-wavelength ground- and space-based observations as possible in order to explain the observed phenomena. Also, the desire to combine observations from different communities to understand how the Sun affects the Earth and its environment means that we must find new ways of linking these data together. Coupled with the rapid growth of data volumes, this necessitates a change in the way solar data are handled.

EGSO is designed to provide integrated access to data for the solar physics community by building a Grid of archives specializing in solar, heliospheric and related data sets. The EGSO Grid uses layers of metadata to tie together the heterogeneous data and is creating tools that assist in selecting, processing and retrieving the selected observations from the archives scattered around the globe. The project has developed several innovative catalogues - including a solar feature catalogue - that for the first time provides the ability to select solar data based on events, features and phenomena.

Several major archives in Europe and the US have been incorporated and EGSO Graphic User Interface (GUI) already supports Date and Event Driven queries; special providers accessed through Web Service interfaces have been established to maintain the new catalogues. Since the first release of EGSO in the autumn of 2003, members of the solar community have been involved in product testing. The constant testing and feedback has allowed us to assure the usability of the system. The resilience of the system has been increased and two more European archives are in the process of being added. The sophistication of the search engine is steadily being improved to maximize the selection that can be made using metadata prior to contacting the archives. Additional query methods based on for example solar features, instruments and campaigns are planned and the selection of time and spatial subsets of the data using cursors will be added shortly. The EGSO infrastructure is designed to handle any archives from Europe or elsewhere wishing to collaborate.

EGSO is collaborating with groups in the US who are also working on virtual observatory projects for solar and heliospheric data with the objective of providing integrated global access to these data. Currently these include the Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO), the Collaborative Sun Earth Connector (CoSEC), the Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO) and the Virtual Space Plasma Observatory (VSPO) - all funded by NASA under a range of programmes. Frequent contacts between the projects have meant that plans for interoperability are already well advanced, with some CoSEC and VSO services already incorporated into EGSO.

At the end of its contract, EGSO will have achieved major progress on the way towards a Virtual Solar Observatory for the benefit of European science. It will have involved about 45 Full Time Equivalent. It is of major importance to pursue such an unprecedented effort and lead and to continue to extend the project's capabilities as the needs of the community grow.

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