NAVO Tools: Using NAVO (and VO) interfaces
This page describes some of the ways you can use the VO interfaces of NASA's archives. You may already be using them.
- MAST's data portal and NAVO directory and
- the HEASARC's Xamin and SkyView interfaces use VO interfaces internally to access data resources.
- IPAC's open-source Firefly toolkit supports TAP searches and certain DataLink capabilities and is used by IRSA, NED, the Exoplanet Archive, and the NSF/DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
- DS9,
- TOPCAT,
- ALADIN
- etc.
- Python (PyVO) and examples given in
- our NAVO Python Notebooks.
There are a myriad VO-enabled tools such as
to access data resources through VO interfaces. Libraries have been written to allow easy scripting of VO access, e.g. in
Support for the VOTable format which many VO interfaces return is now ubiquitous in astronomical packages.
In most cases writing software to access data through VO interfaces is straightforward. Since the protocols implemented at the different archives are the same, a user can switch from one NASA archive to another simply by changing the base URL used.