Authors: ChenZhou Cui HuaPing Sun YongHeng Zhao Yu Luo DaZhi Qi
Publish Date: 2008/06/15
Volume: 53, Issue: 10, Pages: 1479-1483
Abstract
With the development of network and the World Wide Web WWW the Internet has been growing and changing dramatically More and more online database systems and different kinds of services are available for astronomy research How to help users find their way through the jungle of information services becomes an important challenge Although astronomers have been aware of the importance of interoperability and introduced the concept of Virtual Observatory as a uniform environment for future astronomical online resources and services transparent access to heterogeneous online information is still difficult SkyMouse is a lightweight interface for distributed astronomical online resources and services which is designed and developed by us ie Chinese Virtual Observatory project Taking advantage of screen wordcapturing technology different kinds of information systems can be queried through simple mouse actions and results are returned in a uniform web page SkyMouse is an easy to use application aiming to show basic information or to create a comprehensive overview of a specific astronomical object In this paper current status of online resources and services access is reviewed system architecture features and functions of SkyMouse are described challenges for intelligent interface for online astronomical resources and services are discussed
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