PARI is collaborating with Pleiades Consulting Incorporated who have developed a Virutal Astronomy Learning  (VAL) center in the Second Life web-based virtual world.

VAL is the world's first fully interactive and immersive environment for astronomical learning that simulates and stimulates astronomical exploration for high school students, undergraduates, and the public. Students create a virtual self, called an avatar, and enter VAL.

Users can walk through and visit a planetary display area.  Globes, data tables, and images of the planets can be explored.

Users can also visit a radio observatory where they can observe the PARI 4.6-m "Smiley" radio telescope in operation and making observations.

Another area that users can visit is the planetarium where stars, constellations, and information about the night sky is available.

VAL is a game-like environment where students can set variables, watch phenomena unfold, adjust time, distance, and other scales, and view celestial phenomena from any chosen perspective. Students can also study together in laboratory settings, synchronizing their efforts around measurement and observation. They enjoy the benefit of text, voice, IM, forum, blog, and other communications tools. And, to help teachers evaluate the student learning experience, software agents in the simulation can provide assessment and feedback, quiz the users, and make recommendations.

VAL is one part of the vision of the PARI virtual world and builds on PARI's programs where students now remotely operate a 4.6-m radio telescope, visit the PARI StarLab planetarium, and participate in resident programs like Space Science Lab and the Duke TIP Summer Field Study in Astronomy, Physics, and Astrobiology.