Astronomy – ARDC

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) project reduces the barriers for the research community to discover, download and use both public and proprietary data.

We have enabled almost 20 petabytes (PB) of MWA data which is publicly available to both national and international astronomy researchers. This is one of the largest publicly available datasets in global science. The process of developing the ASVO MWA project has also provided vital experience towards the implementation of a Square Kilometre Array (SKA) regional data centre.

Start date 12 January 2018

Expected completion date 31 March 2020

Investment by ARDC $625,000

Co-investment partners

Curtin University of Technology

Swinburne University of Technology

Australian Research Data Commons

NeCTAR (now ARDC)

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre

Research Data Services (now ARDC)

All Sky Virtual Observatory

University of Western Australia

Astronomy Australia Limited

Lead node

1 Enabled a calibration solution to data provided by the ASVO MWA node

This new feature greatly reduced the barriers to entry for astronomers who have no experience working with the MWA telescope, as they can now download a calibrated data set and then use any common radio astronomy software to analyse the data to produce science products like spectra and images.

2 Interface to distributed storage

Implemented a VOSpace which is the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) interface to distributed storage.

3 Authentication/authorisation interface

Enables users to sign in using their own institution (utilising the Australian Access Federation (AAF) and eduGAIN). MWA members are also able to access proprietary data.

4 Advanced administration interface

This advanced interface allowed for the management of jobs and users.

5 Intergalactic Medium (IGM) science module.

6 New galaxy formation model

Implemented new galaxy formation model utilising the new infrastructure and IGM module.Tiamat/Meraxes are now selectable datasets in the TAO5 UI.