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Ontology of Astronomical Object Types
Version 1.20

IVOA Note 25 February 2009

Interest/Working Group:
http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaSemantics
Author(s):
Laurent Cambresy, Sebastien Derriere, Paolo Padovani, Andrea Preite-Martinez, Alexandre Richard
Editor(s):
Sebastien Derriere, Andrea Preite-Martinez, Alexandre Richard

Abstract

The Semantic Web and ontologies are emerging technologies which enable advanced knowledge management and sharing. Their application to Astronomy can offer new ways of sharing information between astronomers, but also between machines or software components and allow inference engines to perform reasoning on an astronomical knowledge base. This document presents the current status of an ontology describing knowledge about astronomical object types, originally based on the standardization of object types used in the SIMBAD database. Specifically, this ontology of defined concepts is designed to enable advanced reasoning on astronomical object types. The possibilities offered by such a system are semi-automatic or fully-automatic applications such as checking the semantic consistency of databases entries, providing new means of building or refining queries and suggesting object types matching a description.

Status of this document

This is an IVOA Note expressing suggestions from and opinions of the authors.
It is intended to share best practices, possible approaches, or other perspectives on interoperability with the Virtual Observatory. It should not be referenced or otherwise interpreted as a standard specification.



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