The ESO Data Processing System (EDPS) is a new software infrastructure to run the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) science data processing modules (“pipeline recipes”). These recipes are used for quality control at the telescope, unsupervised production of science and calibration products for ESO’s science archive, and for interactive data reduction by external science users. EDPS can be used to address all these use cases and therefore replaces individual dedicated systems that have been in use ESO up to now.
KEYWORDS: Quality control, Calibration, Equipment, Data processing, Data archive systems, Large telescopes, Data storage, Data acquisition, Process control, Signal processing
We present the tool qcFlow designed to handle the quality control process at ESO’s LaSilla-Paranal Observatory in the ELT era. We highlight the top-level requirements and the way they are implemented in the tool. We also describe the supporting data flow software that allows the quality control process for a large suite of different astronomical instruments to be efficient and automated to a high degree.
During the last years, ESO has undertaken the re-definition of all its front-end interfaces, from the preparation and submission of observing proposals up to their final scientific review by the ESO Observing Programmes Committee (OPC). Because of its overall complexity, ESO decided to go for a staged approach, which on one hand allowed us to offer the new proposals interface as soon as it was available, but on the other hand it has been challenging us in the operational handling of two simultaneous systems, the old and the new one. In 2019, we successfully deployed the new, web-based, Phase1 user interface for proposals preparation and submission (p1ui) and in 2021 we were able to offer for the first time a web-based, proposals grading system, that supported the proposals review and Expert Panel discussions, albeit online due to the COVID19 pandemic. In this presentation, we describe the overall project, focusing on the successful deployments of the new Phase 1 User Interface (for proposals submission), of the Proposal Evaluation Interface (for the proposals review process) and their subsequent improvements, made possible by closing the loop very effectively with our users’ community. We will then conclude by presenting ESO future plans in the Phase1 area, including new proposal submission channels and new review schemes.
The ESO Science Archive offers powerful interfaces through which any user can browse and download its content. The most recent developments [18,19,20,22] consist of the web-based archive science portal and a programmatic interface providing Virtual Observatory (VO) access to the Science Archive. The underlying databases offer a rich set of scientifically characterizing and VO-based metadata to facilitate data discovery [1, 15, and 23 in turn based on 2,5,6,8]. The query results provide access to the identified files together with related ancillary files and information (e.g., previews, weight-maps, data documentation, calibration reference files, etc.). Specific to the programmatic interface, users can explore the structure and content of the archive databases and scientific catalogue tables [4,21], and then write their own queries [3], for an empowered data discovery experience. When downloading the data, users can select the cutout service [16] to retrieve selected spatial and/or spectral subsets instead of the entire datasets. Authentication and authorization allow privileged users to extend their query and download capabilities beyond what is possible to anonymous users. The adoption of Virtual Observatory (VO) standards and technologies has been at the core of the development of the described interfaces. Here below we present the interfaces, and then an analysis of the costs and benefits of utilizing VO technologies in the ESO archive, as well as the lessons learned in the process.
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