Presentation

The Spanish Virtual Observatory (SVO) is organising a VO school aimed specifically at Master’s and PhD students and young postdoctoral researchers in Astrophysics. The school will take place on 6 and 13 November and 4 December 2026.

Goal

The main objective of the school is to introduce participants to the possibilities offered by the Virtual Observatory for accessing and analysing data from astronomical archives.

During the school, participants will become familiar with the main Virtual Observatory tools through tutorials based on real scientific cases. They will also receive guidance and support from tutors from the Spanish Virtual Observatory.

Important Dates

The school will be held online on 6 and 13 November and 4 December 2026. The sessions will be delivered via Zoom. Instructions on how to use Zoom during the school can be found here.

Programme

It is important to have installed beforehand in your laptops the VO-tools to be used in the School, namely:

ALADIN: Download the Aladin.jar file (Linux users only) and execute it from a terminal using “java -jar Aladin.jar”. MacOS and Windows users: download the suitahttps://zenodo.org/records/10720670ble files here. Aladin is compatible with Java releases from Java release 1.7 to the last one. More information here.
TOPCAT: Download the topcat-full.jar file and execute it from a terminal using “java -jar topcat-full.jar” (Linux and Windows users. For windows users, double-click on the topcat-full.jar file may also work ). MacOS users: download the suitable file here. TOPCAT is written in the Java language using the Java 2 Standard Edition version 8, and should run on any Java SE 8 or more recent system. See the documentation here.
VOSA: Web server (you don’t need to install anything). All participants must register in advance.

For a correct developement of the school, we encourage all participants to test Aladin and TOPCAT following this short video and using this file.

Day 1. Friday 6 November (9:15h – 14:15h)

09:15 – 09:30 Reception of participants. Check that everything (zoom, video, audio,…) is working well.
- Waiting room manager: Raúl Gutiérrez

09:30 – 09:50 Introduction to VO and the School (Enrique Solano).
09:50 – 11:50 Tutorial #1: Accessing astronomical data through Python
- Host: Miriam Cortés
- Tutor: Ricardo Rizzo
- Backup tutors: Pedro Mas, M. Cruz Gálvez-Ortiz
- Get the tutorial and the ancillary information in this link
11:50 – 12:15 Break
12:15 – 14:15 Tutorial #2: Aladin
- Host: Ricardo Rizzo
- Tutor: Francisco Jiménez (GUI), Raquel Murillo (Python)
- Backup tutors: Miriam Cortés, Enrique Solano.
- Get the tutorial and the ancillary information in this link

Day 2. Friday 13 November (09:15 – 14:00h)

09:15 – 09:30 Reception of participants. Check that everything (zoom, video, audio,…) is working well.
- Waiting room manager: Almudena Velasco
09:30 – 11:30 Tutorial #3: TOPCAT
- Host: Alba Aller
- Tutor: Belén López (GUI), Pedro Mas (Python)
- Backup tutors: M. Cruz Gálvez, John F. Aguilar, Patricia Cruz
- Introduction to VOSA
- Get the tutorial and the ancillary information in this link
11:30 – 12:00 Break
12:00 – 14:00 Tutorial #4: VOSA
- Host: Patricia Cruz
- Tutor: Raquel Murillo
- Backup tutors: Francisco Jiménez, John F. Aguilar, Alba Aller
- Get the tutorial and the ancillary information in this link

Day 3. Friday 4 December (11:00-12:00h)

Participants’ use cases

Bonus material:

Have a look at our Zenodo repository to find more VO-science tutorials

Registration

Click here to register

Organización

Spanish Virtual Observatory

Contact

esm@cab.inta-csic.es

XXVI Escuela SVO