Australian Data Experts To Support World’s Largest Sky Survey
Australian Astronomical Optics at Macquarie University and the Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology have partnered to process a cosmic data deluge from Chile’s new Rubin Observatory, supporting the world’s largest sky survey capturing 20 terabytes nightly.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will capture the entire available night sky every few nights in its Legacy Survey of Space and Time. The partnership will see Macquarie and Swinburne host and process over seven petabytes of data each year.
Starting a couple of weeks ago, the LSST will conduct a ten-year survey of the southern hemisphere sky, capturing images every night with a 3,200 megapixel camera, allowing the survey will reveal billions of previously unimaged stars and galaxies.
The work is supported by more than $1 million in funding from LIEF grants, NCRIS funding via Astronomy Australia Limited, and UNSW allocations. Over its ten-year operation, the survey will create an astronomical dataset without precedent, cataloguing billions of objects and tracking their changes over time.