Astrohubs for data analysis, fusion, sharing, exploration, modeling.
Astrohub supports research in different ARC areas. Astrohub is used by local ARC groups, but its greatest strength is to enable distributed teams to collaborate seamlessly on data generation, analysis, simulation, fusion. This section describes some of the research and teams supported by Astrohub.
Computational Stellar Astrophysics
The CSA hub is used by the Computational Stellar Astrophysics group in the Astronomy Research Centre.
CSA hub supports five present group members and four former post-doctoral researchers of the CSA group who are still collaborating with us.
NewEarth
The NewEarth Hub supports exo-planet research in the Astronomy Research Centre.
Technology
Astrohub is an implementation of the Cyberhubs: Virtual Research Environments for Astronomy system developed by a team lead by Falk Herwig in the Astronomy Research Centre. Cyberhubs combines Docker virtualization with the latest JupyterHub notebook technology, and incorporates third-party authentication. Cyberhubs allow multiple users to access the same virtual research environment composed of a combination of storage, processing capacity and dedicated software packages specific to the particular research goals.
Astrohub adds to the multiuser capability of cyberhubs a multihub capability, meaning that multiple hubs can be served on the same server. Astrohub is presently running on a virtual server of the Compute Canada WestCloud.
Team
This Astrohub implementation and the latest version of cyberhubs has been developed, implement and is operated by
- Falk Herwig (ARC, team leader, requirements, systems design, implementation)
- Belaid Moa (RCS, technical design and proto-typing)
- Stephenson Yang (ARC, development, implementation, maintenance & operation)
- Adam Paul (ARC, Coop student, html programming)
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of cyberhubs was developed as part of the CANFAR project WENDI, funded by Canarie, UVic and NSERC. Over the years Cyberhubs has been supported by funds from NSERC, CFI via Compute Canada, UVic, EcoCanada. The PPMstar hub and specifically the advanced data storage, compression and access methods required to make large 3D hydrdynamic simulations accessible in this platform have been developed in collaboration with Paul Woodward and his team at the University of Minnesota, supported through an NSF CDS&E grant. Aspects and capabilities related to CSA's nuclear astrophysics research (WENDI) have been developed with support from NSF's Physics Frontier Center Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics.