Euclid's US Science Data Center: lessons learned from building a small part of a big system

Euclid is an ESA M-class mission to study the geometry and nature of the dark universe, slated for launch in mid-2022. NASA is participating in the mission through the contribution of the near-infrared detectors and associated electronics, the nomination of scientists for membership in the Euclid Consortium, and by establishing the Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI) to support the US community. As part of ENSCI’s work, we will participate in the Euclid Science Ground Segment (SGS) and build and operate the US Science Data Center (SDC-US), which will be a node in the distributed data processing system for the mission. SDC-US is one of 10 data centers, and will contribute about 5% of the computing and data storage for the distributed system. We discuss lessons learned in developing a node in a distributed system. For example, there is a significant advantage to SDC-US development in sharing of knowledge, problem solving, and resource burden with other parts of the system. On the other hand, fitting into a system that is distributed geographically and relies on diverse computing environments results in added complexity in constructing SDC-US

Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.

This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets. The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speci¯c formats. We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signi¯cantly increased impact and better understanding of complex 3D scenes

The VISTA Science Archive

We describe the VISTA Science Archive (VSA) and its first public release of data from five of the six VISTA Public Surveys. The VSA exists to support the VISTA Surveys through their lifecycle: the VISTA Public Survey consortia can use it during their quality control assessment of survey data products before submission to the ESO Science Archive Facility (ESO SAF); it supports their exploitation of survey data prior to its publication through the ESO SAF; and, subsequently, it provides the wider community with survey science exploitation tools that complement the data product repository functionality of the ESO SAF. This paper has been written in conjunction with the first public release of public survey data through the VSA and is designed to help its users understand the data products available and how the functionality of the VSA supports their varied science goals. We describe the design of the database and outline the database-driven curation processes that take data from nightly pipeline-processed and calibrated FITS files to create science-ready survey datasets. Much of this design, and the codebase implementing it, derives from our earlier WFCAM Science Archive (WSA), so this paper concentrates on the VISTA-specific aspects and on improvements made to the system in the light of experience gained in operating the WSA.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures. Minor edits to fonts and typos after sub-editting. Published in A&

Engaging Opportunities: Connecting young people with contemporary research and researchers

This is the final report for ‘Engaging Opportunities’, an RCUK-funded School-University Partnership between the Open University and the Denbigh Teaching School Alliance. Informed by action research, this four-year project was designed to create structured, strategic, sustainable and equitable mechanisms for effective school-university engagement with research. The report describes an evidence-based strategy designed to embed school-university engagement with research within the University’s strategic planning for research and the operational practices of researchers. Through the early stages of our partnership we noted a lack of suitable planning tools that work for researchers, teachers and students. We therefore introduced a flexible and adaptable framework of four types of activity—open lectures, open dialogues, open inquiry and open creativity—combined with an upstream approach to planning based on a set of six principles. A sub-set of these activities were evaluated through a combination of surveys, interviews and interventions. In conclusion, we argue that institutional and professional cultures can be resistant to the prospect of fully embedding school-university engagement with research in a structured, strategic and sustainable manner, and offer suggestions for how this context could and should be changed

Influence of time and ageing conditions on the properties of ferrihydrite

Natural conversion of ferrihydrite (Fh), a widespread Fe(iii)-oxyhydroxide mineral at the Earth's surface, to thermodynamically more stable iron oxides such as goethite (Gt) and hematite (Hm) is a slow process that spans months to years. Here we examined the effects of synthesis and storage conditions on the hydration, the ratio of tetrahedral to octahedral iron sites, and the transformation of naturally aged 2-line Fh at room temperature and mildly acidic pH over an ageing period of 5 years. Fh samples synthesized and aged in either aerobic or anaerobic conditions were characterized over time by XRD, SEM, thermogravimetric analysis - mass spectroscopy (TGA-MS), and X-ray absorption spectroscopies (XANES and XMCD). The findings show that the ratio of tetrahedral to octahedral Fe(iii) sites in Fh is correlated to its extent of hydration, with fresher Fh samples exhibiting a higher ratio and more bound water. Fresh Fh aged in aerobic conditions has similar bound inorganic carbon, is more hydrated, and has less tetrahedral Fe(iii) than that aged in anaerobic conditions. Hence, for relatively fresh Fh there is a link between Fh properties and storage conditions. However, the long-term ageing characteristics, such as the transformation rate and relative phase fraction of Gt and Hm products, are not noticeably impacted by storage conditions. TGA-MS measurements coupled with O K-edge XANES spectra confirm that Fh tends to lose its hydration as it ages, as expected. Corresponding Fe L2,3-edge XMCD spectra reveal that this dehydration is coupled to a steady decrease in the ratio of tetrahedral to octahedral Fe(iii) sites. In addition to the obvious constraints these findings place on making comparisons across Fh samples of different age and environmental settings, they also highlight that Fh structure, and consequently magnetism, are linked to its bound water content

The Euclid Science Ground Segment Distributed Infrastructure: System Integration and Challenges

The Science Ground Segment (SGS) of the Euclid mission provides distributed and redundant data storage and processing, federating nine Science Data Centres (SDCs) and a Science Operations Centre. The SGS reference architecture is based on loosely coupled systems and services, broadly organized into a common infrastructure of transverse software components and the scientific data Processing Functions. The SGS common infrastructure includes: 1) the Euclid Archive System (EAS), a central metadata repository which inventories, indexes and localizes the huge amount of distributed data; 2) a Distributed Storage System of EAS, providing a unified view of the SDCs storage systems and supporting several transfer protocols; 3) an Infrastructure Abstraction Layer, isolating the scientific data processing software from the underlying IT infrastructure and providing a common, lightweight workflow management system; 4) a Common Orchestration System, performing a balanced distribution of data and processing among the SDCs. Virtualization is another key element of the SGS infrastructure. We present the status of the Euclid SGS software infrastructure, the prototypes developed and the continuous system integration and testing performed through the Euclid “SGS Challenges”