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Paper: DACE: Backend Infrastructure for Data Transfer, Storage, Exchange and Computations through the Web Platform
Volume: 522, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXVII
Page: 303
Authors: Buchschacher, N.; Alesina, F.; Ségransan, D.
Abstract: "Exoplanets" is a key theme in astronomical research in Switzerland, particularly after Michel Mayor's discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting around 51 Pegasis in 1995. Since then, several institutes are increasing the research in different sub-domain of exoplanets, focusing not only on the discovery, but also the origin, the atmospheres and the general characterization of exoplanets. DACE (Data and Analysis Center for Exoplanets) is a platform used to store, exchange and visualise astronomical data produced by different research institutes. Every day, a lot of observational data are automatically transferred from different telescopes. These data are then processed and formatted to be stored in the Geneva Observatory data center. Synthetic exoplanet populations are simulated by the university of Bern and transferred in the DACE database for analysis and sharing. The platform not only provides a storage infrastructure, but also some sophisticated tools to do some advanced analysis. Users have the possibility to launch long time computations on a cluster, providing more than 700 CPU cores (1500 in the future) and a few GPU cores. Using the slurm workload manager, we are able to schedule different jobs depending on the available resources and we provide a web interface to facilitate the data access and the different interactions with the cluster. DACE is funded by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, federating the Swiss expertise in exoplanet research.
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