Bologna, Italy – The Congress Centre of the Research Area in Bologna served as the host venue for the IVOA (Northern Spring) May 2023 Interoperability Meeting. The event took place from Monday, May 8 to Friday, May 12, 2023. Organized by VObs.it, the Italian project member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), the meeting garnered sponsorship from INAF and received support from ASI-SSDC and INFN.
One of the highlights of the event was the presentation on the EXTRACT Project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe program under grant agreement number 101093110. The presentation focused on the project’s TASKA use case, centered around transient astrophysics using a pathfinder for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
During the presentation, B. Cecconi and the EXTRACT & TASKA teams highlighted several software platforms that will be assessed within the project. These platforms include Lithops, a Python multi-cloud serverless data processing framework; Nuvla, an edge-to-cloud management platform software; COMPS, a software development framework for distributing workflows in a distributed computing infrastructure; Ray, a distributed execution framework for large-scale machine learning and reinforcement learning applications; and DataClay, a distributed storage system for maintaining user-defined data consistency.
The focus of the TASKA use case is the NenuFAR project, an SKA Pathfinder located in Nançay, France. The use case involves edge data processing and real-time analysis, specifically in the “beam forming” mode, with the goal of detecting structures using analog-to-information (AI) conversion. Cloud data processing takes place in the NenuFAR data center, where post-processing of imaging data occurs through orchestration of staging, computing, and optimization of workflows. This includes generic processing tasks such as calibration and source removal, as well as specific heavy processing tasks like dynamic spectrum extraction from visibilities. The aim is to enable dynamic imaging of transient and variable sources in visibility space through the decomposition of components and calibration.
The presentation on transient astrophysics with the SKA pathfinder showcased the progress made within the EXTRACT Project and highlighted the significance of data-driven workflows in advancing our understanding of the universe.
Check out the slides here.
For more information about the EXTRACT Project and its contributions to data processing and transient astrophysics, visit their website at www.extract-project.eu.