Community Science & Data Center

NOIRLab's Community Science & Data Center (CSDC) facilitates and supports community open access to telescopes operated by MSO, Gemini, and other organizations across the US ground-based optical and infrared system. The CSDC also provides software systems, user services, and development initiatives to connect and support the scientific missions of Gemini, MSO-CTIO, MSO-KPNO, and Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Activities within the CSDC program include:

ANTARES ANTARES is a software tool built at NOIRLab to process information about changing objects in the night sky. ANTARES currently processes the public alert stream from the Zwicky Transient Facility. The upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time, operated by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will provide an alert stream a hundred times larger and ANTARES will scale up to process it as well.
Astro Data Archive The NOIRLab Astro Data Archive (formerly NOAO Science Archive) provides access to data taken with more than 40 telescope and instrument combinations, including those operated in partnership with the WIYN, SOAR, and SMARTS consortia, from semester 2004B to the present.
Astro Data Lab NOIRLab’s Astro Data Lab is a community science platform. Its foremost goal is to enable efficient exploration and analysis of the large datasets now being generated by instruments on NOIRLab’s telescopes. Astro Data Lab is being developed at NOIRLab’s Community Science & Data Center.
La Serena School of Data Science This school takes place annually in August on the AURA Observatory campus in La Serena, Chile. This capacity-building initiative, supported by a number of sponsors including NOIRLab, focuses on applied tools for data-driven sciences.
Time Allocation Committee Supports proposals for open-access observing time on telescopes across the US ground-based O/IR system through the operation of a peer-review process.
US National Gemini Office Interface for the US astronomical community to the Gemini Observatory. Supports US Gemini Users in the phases of the astronomical observing cycle, from proposal preparation through data analysis.