The Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory is a new management tool designed to be used with the large database of images obtained with ground based telescopes in the IOPW framework.

The PVOL system adds a new and advanced way to search planetary images (Tools section), but including the old simple list mode in the IOPW webpage (Images section).

An online Central Meridian and Julian Date calculator is also available in the Tools section.

Future updates of this system will include more advanced features such as a CM longitude to Date and Time converter.


Differences between IOPW and PVOL images
Althought the original images are the same, IOPW and PVOL images are stored in different databases. If you look for standard IOPW images you will find that the information given for each file is limited. This is because we can have more than one planetary image in the same file, and, therefore, images with different dates and times.

PVOL files contain only one planetary image in each file, so a unique date, time and filter is associated with each entry in the database. This allows not only to look for date/time/filter/author values but also for CM longitudes in systems I, II and III for Jupiter and I and III for Saturn. In the Tools section you have a standard search engine for PVOL images.


System overview
The PVOL system is programmed using Java for all the background processing, and simple SQL for the queries to the database.
We are using Apache-HTTPd 2.0 web server, Apache-Tomcat 5.5 servlet engine and MySQL server database system.

Apache HTTPD server		Apache Jakarta Tomcat server		MySQL database server

Implementation Team
This project is being developed by Aleksander Morgado, member of the Planetary Sciences Group (GCP, Grupo de Ciencias Planetarias) in the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU).

Raymond Tam, working in Caltech, helped developing the VoTable response during the 1st National Virtual Observatory Summer School in Aspen, Colorado (USA).