The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will capture the entire available night sky every few nights in its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
Macquarie University’s Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) team in partnership with Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing will host and process more than seven petabytes of data each year.
The AAO Research Data & Software (AAO RDS) team will provide essential software and data engineering expertise for an LSST Independent Data Access Centre (IDAC) hosted at Swinburne, making the data available to the national astronomy community.
The collaboration operates under Astronomy Data and Computing Services (ADACS), an initiative of Astronomy Australia Limited, with nodes at Macquarie, Swinburne and Curtin universities.
Starting this week, the LSST will conduct a ten-year survey of the southern hemisphere sky, capturing images every night with a 3,200 megapixel camera. The survey will reveal billions of previously unimaged stars and galaxies, generating approximately 20 terabytes of raw data nightly.
“It’s a huge volume - most astronomers might deal with 20 terabytes of data over a year, rather than in one night,” says Dr Simon O’Toole, Head of Research Data & Software at AAO.
“As the next generation of large telescopes and surveys comes online, the challenge is to get this data out to astronomers to do their analyses and all of the associated cool science.”
The project represents Australia’s in-kind contribution to the LSST, established through an agreement between Astronomy Australia Limited and the Rubin Observatory.
The Australian team will enhance the observatory’s science platform software to help process the vast data volumes and create comprehensive catalogues for global astronomical analysis.
The work is supported by more than $1 million in funding from LIEF grants, NCRIS funding via Astronomy Australia Limited, and UNSW allocations.
Macquarie’s AAO RDS team is leading the development of a game-changing software platform to manage and deliver Rubin’s enormous data flow, supporting large-scale data processing and access for astronomers worldwide.
“We’re making sure the software is robust, so that when someone adds a new feature to do a particular kind of science, it doesn’t break the whole system,” Dr O’Toole says.
Professor Jarrod Hurley, Professor and Supercomputing Manager at Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, leads the hardware infrastructure for the project.
“This project positions Australia at the cutting edge of big data astronomy - the techniques we develop here will be essential for the next generation of mega-surveys,” Professor Hurley says.
Dr O’Toole says the project will enable discoveries across timescales never before possible, from tracking asteroids in our solar system to detecting explosive events in distant galaxies.
“I'm really excited about capturing the universe in motion - everything from stars exploding and neutron stars colliding, to black holes merging. And closer to home, we can also track asteroids and other solar system bodies,” he says.
The Rubin Observatory, located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, is currently in final commissioning stages, with first look images revealed this week.
Over its ten-year operation, the survey will create an astronomical dataset without precedent, cataloguing billions of objects and tracking their changes over time.
Australian astronomers will have early access to this data alongside their US and Chilean colleagues, positioning Australia at the forefront of next-generation sky surveys.
Dr O’ Toole is available for interview via Macquarie University media team, communications@mq.edu.au or simon.otoole@mq.edu.au
Professor Hurley is available for interview via Swinburne University of Technology media team, media@swinburne.edu.au or jhurley@swin.edu.au
