Radio Synthesis Imaging: a Grand Challenge HPCC Project

Abstract

This paper describes the technique of radio synthesis imaging and its computational requirements. The radio synthesis imaging project at the National Center for Su percomputing Applications (NCSA) is addressing these requirements in four areas: real-time transfer of data from remotely located telescopes to NCSA and archiving of these raw data; production of software for calibration, image formation, and image improvement on NCSA par allel processor supercomputers; development of a system for archiving of final processed images in a digital library; and production of sophisticated tools for image visualiza tion and analysis. At Supercomputing '95 in San Diego the authors demonstrated an observation of the center of the Milky Way galaxy, data processing on the remote NCSA SGI Power Challenge Array, accessing complementary data in the NCSA Digital Image Library, and visualization of the galactic center data sets.