The Virtual Solar Observatory—A Resource for International Heliophysics Research

The Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) has been developed to allow researchers, educators, and the general public to access data and images from the major sources of on-line solar data. The VSO substantially reduces the effort required to locate disparate data sets, and removes the need for the user to locate the data and learn multiple interfaces. The VSO provides a single interface to about 60 geographically distributed data sets including space- and ground-based sources. These data sets incorporate several physical variables including magnetic field, intensity, Doppler velocity, etc., and all wavelengths from X-ray to radio. All layers of the sun, from the interior to the corona, are included. In this paper we describe the system and present the interface that the user will encounter. We also discuss future enhancements planned for the system.