How Will Astronomy Archives Survive The Data Tsunami?

Astronomy is already awash with data: currently 1 PB (petabyte) of public data is electronically accessible, and this volume is growing at 0.5 PB per year. The availability of this data has already transformed research in astronomy, and the STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute) now reports that more papers are published with archived data sets than with newly acquired data.

This growth in data size and anticipated usage will accelerate in the coming few years as new projects such as the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array), and SKA (Square Kilometer Array) move into operation. These new projects will use much larger arrays of telescopes and detectors or much higher data acquisition rates than are now used. Projections indicate that by 2020, more than 60 PB of archived data will be accessible to astronomers.

G. Bruce Berriman, Steven L. Groom

Comments: 8 pages, 3 figures; ACM Queue. Vol 9, Number 10, October 2011 (this http URL)
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
DOI: 10.1145/2043174.2043190
Cite as: arXiv:1111.0075v1 [astro-ph.IM]
Submission history From: Bruce Berriman [view email]
[v1] Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:23:49 GMT (283kb)