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How will astronomy archives survive the data tsunami?

The article discusses data management in astronomy, looking at the acquisition of data from observatories, missions, and archives and examining how astronomical databases can avoid performance degradation. The articles looks at the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO), which is using an R-tree-bas...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 54; no. 12; pp. 52 - 57
Main Authors: Berriman, G. Bruce, Groom, Steven L.
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Dec2011
Subjects:
Database management
Astronomy
Data libraries
Databases
Cloud computing
Graphics processing units
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The article discusses data management in astronomy, looking at the acquisition of data from observatories, missions, and archives and examining how astronomical databases can avoid performance degradation. The articles looks at the Virtual Astronomical Observatory (VAO), which is using an R-tree-based indexing scheme to develop an international data-discovery service. The applications of technologies including cloud computing and graphics processing units (GPUs) in astronomy are examined. Data archives for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope and the Canadian Astronomy Data Center (CADC) are discussed.