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Description
This is a course on using the Virtual Observatory (VO), an
international research data infrastructure in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Starting with a brief discussion of some general
concepts, it introduces some of the major client programs like TOPCAT
and Aladin, together with some simple discovery protocols. A first
focus topic is the query language ADQL, which is treated within the
equivalent of three lectures. The second major focus of the course is
the premier Python interface to the VO, pyVO, which is used to also
more deeply investigate the topics treated before. The course is
complemented by a number of side tracks, brief discussions of more
fundamental or more specialised VO topics.
The course comes with many exercises, most of which also have
solutions. We hope it is suitable for both self-study and as lecture
notes in teacher-led situations. In the latter case, it is designed to
work as a semester-long course with two hours of lectures and lab work
each per week.
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