AstroGrid-D
AstroGrid-D is an E-Science initiative to develop and apply grid computing middleware (like the Globus Toolkit) for astrophysical purposes. The "German Astronomy Community Grid" (GACG) consortium was formed by a considerable number of German astronomical institutes, computer science institutes, and supercomputer centers as part of the German D-Grid initiative. It aims to offer a standard interface to supercomputers, to perform large scale computer simulations, to interconnect astronomical archives and to incorporate astronomical instruments, such as robotical telescopes, and experiments.
GAVO supports the GACG consortium, and is closely collaborating with the GACG.
On the long run we aim to develop applications that use both the computational and data storage resources of the grid as well as the Virtual Organisation standards and protocols to retrieve data and publish results. Also the Virtual Observatory already offers the metadata set necessary to fully describe all astronomical data within the grid, an important condition for data management.
Collaborators with AstroGrid-D are Iliya Nickelt and Gerard Lemson.