The virtual observatories: A major new facility for X-ray astronomy

We describe how the Virtual Observatory (VO) projects in Europe, the USA, Japan, and elsewhere are meeting the challenge of providing simple and efficient access to data, from the world's observational facilities, analysis tools and computational resources. We note the pan European Euro-VO project, and it's technological development arm - the VOTECH project (see http://www.eurovotech. org), with a focus on how it is designing the framework for mass scale access to not only major X-ray facilities now such as Chandra and XMM-Newton, but also to the large data from new facilities such as VISTA, ELTs, ALMA. Science drivers from the X-ray research community are helping shape the development of the VO, with their requirements on access to both X-ray and supporting large multi-wavelength data sets, often coupled with comparison to theoretical simulations (e.g. in the study of galaxy clusters). We note relevant capabilities currently available, including science services from the UK AstroGrid project Future services, such as those tuned to generate 'observational' xray maps of gas in clusters, on demand from a range of input simulations will be outlined. We give a specific usage demonstration of the AstroGrid system in mining X-ray and optical/IR data in the search for high redshift galaxies. We note how major missions and research consortia can be the first to benefit from the use of newly emerging VO systems.