screenshot of the CDS portal

CDS, the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg, already bring us the astronomy research goodness of Simbad, Vizier and Aladin. A month ago, the service launched a one-stop portal for all three services – I’ve been using it this week and it’s a great step forward.

The portal provides just one entry box for an object name or coordinates, and searches within a 2 arcmin standard radius for objects and bibliographic references via Simbad, images via Aladin and catalogues via Vizier. It’s obviously a first implementation, and the input options aren’t as rich as the full interface for each of the services (e.g. different coordinate systems, search radii), but this does provide a much cleaner, simpler look and feel. There’s even an experimental mobile interface, good for those who want to work on the go.

Interestingly, the CDS Portal contains a personalised “My Data” space, where you can import VO tables of objects as input for queries and store up to 500 MB of data for future use. This still looks a bit bare-bones for now but may well be the most promising new feature.

After the introduction of annotations in Simbad, the Portal and data space looks like another step in CDS’ evolution from a static database query service to an kind of integrated and personalised online workspace for astronomy. I’m interested in finding out what other new developments are in the works – and I have a feeling we’ll be hearing something about it at next year’s dotAstronomy…..

CDS’s developer for the Portal sent me a nice tweet inviting feedback and comments – I’m going to take the liberty to extend that invitation to all of you. Post comments on here or contact him via twitter.