Data Lab 2.0 Release at Denver AAS Meeting

Knut Olsen (NOAO)

Open Sky, Open Data: try it out at datalab.noirlab.edu - it’s your universe to explore!

The NOAO Data Lab will release version 2.0 of its Science Platform at the 232nd Meeting of the Astronomical Society in Denver, Colorado 3-7 June 2018. This release will feature new datasets, including 30 billion single-epoch measurements from the NOAO Source Catalog, the sixth data release of the Legacy Survey (DR6), a copy of Gaia DR2, and cross-matched tables between Gaia DR2 and all of our highest value catalogs. It will also feature new services, such as web tools to access image cutouts and our virtual storage system, a user command-line shell, and many new features and improvements to the underlying codebase.

Using Data Lab 2.0, users can browse and explore numerous large astronomical catalogs containing billions of objects, submit queries to the database containing the catalogs, retrieve image cutouts from archived images, store results on the Data Lab’s servers, and perform scientific analysis and visualization of the results. All of these functions can be carried out within a web browser. Scientists can run Python code on our Jupyter Notebook server to interact with, analyze, and visualize the datasets without having to transfer large amounts of data or set up complex development environments. Data Lab datasets are also accessible through TOPCAT or through a downloadable command-line client. Documentation is available in the form of an online User Manual and a Helpdesk. Example Jupyter Notebooks are also provided for all new accounts.

To introduce some of the science opportunities are offered by Data Lab 2.0, demos at the NOAO AAS booth will explore science cases such as:

• Exploration of the Gaia DR2 dataset
• Time series retrieval from the nearly all-sky NOAO Source Catalog
• Star/galaxy/QSO classification
• Discovery of faint Milky Way dwarf companion galaxies
• Examination of large scale structure in the Legacy Survey and SDSS/BOSS surveys

Stop by the booth and give Data Lab a try!