SAO TDC: Catalogs and Computing Resources

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

SAO TDC: Computing Resources and Catalogs

Compute Resources

The Telescope Data Center makes available computers for the reduction of ground-based telescope data of all types. The current communal machine is named tdc2 and is a Dell PowerEdge R900 with 8 3.0-GHz cpus and 128 GB of memory.

The tdc2 computer is open for use by anyone with a CF-domain account who has telescope data to reduce.

The TDC also has priority on 8 nodes of the hydra computing cluster. Separate accounts, as managed by the CF, are required to get onto this system.

Usage priorities

We are not currently trying to enforce the use of the tdc2 system to only those with optical and infrared ground-based data. We do have a priority order, however:

Reduction of MMTO, FLWO, and Magellan data
Non-CFA optical ground-based data reduction
Non-optical ground-based data reduction
Everything else

Catalogs of Astronomical Sources

The TDC maintains local copies of most of the largest astronomical catalogs, including the USNO-B1.0, 2MASS Point Source Catalog, and many others, with similar interfaces to other large catalogs which are not distributed, such as the GSC II.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

A selection of the SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7) databases and associated files has been transferred to CFA. Each of these has been condensed by choosing a (we hope!) useful subset of the columns, and converted the Starbase table format.

Public Data Archive

The TDC maintains a public archive of reduced spectra from several of our low-dispersion spectrographs on Mt. Hopkins in Arizona.

Raw data archiving

The TDC maintains raw data archives of FLWO, MMTO and Magellan instruments. Most FLWO and MMTO data is brought to Cambridge automatically by the internet and taped. The data remains available (to users with appropriate permissions) on disk as space permits. The entire data set of all the current MMT F/5 SAO and FLWO Ridge instruments are kept on disk.

Magellan data is contributed by observers and PIs and stored locally on disk and on tape. The TDC makes no other use of this data. There are two summary files of the data in this archive, one sorted by date: magellan_date.db and one sorted by PI: magellan_pi.db.

For FLWO and MMT data, see the summary table for details.