The Canadian Virtual Observatory Project

Abstract.

The Canadian Virtual Observatory (CVO) project is now funded at a level that places it among the major Virtual Observatory (VO) projects in the world. The fact that the CVO is a project within the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre makes it unique in several ways. Our VO development efforts coexist with the efforts required to maintain an operational data centre. Although this implies the potential for competition for resources, it also means that we have the storage, processing, and database infrastructure in place to quickly develop and deploy services. We have the obligation to deploy new services to our users on a regular basis which rules out long periods of research. This is a valuable spur toward quick prototyping. Importantly, we have excellent access to data that we can process in order to upgrade it to a VO-compliant state and we can therefore make an important contribution to increasing VO content. It is not a bad place to be doing VO work.