Abstract
Astrophysics and Space Science are becoming increasingly characterised by what is now known as “big data”, the bottlenecks for progress partly shifting from data acquisition to “data mining”. Truth is that the amount and rate of data accumulation in many fields already surpasses the local capabilities for its processing and exploitation, and the efficient conversion of scientific data into knowledge is everywhere a challenge. The result is that, to a large extent, isolated data archives risk being progressively likened to “data graveyards”, where the information stored is not reused for scientific work. Responsible and efficient use of these large data-sets means democratising access and extracting the most science possible from it, which in turn signifies improving data accessibility and integration. Improving data processing capabilities is another important issue specific to researchers and computer scientists of each field. The project presented here wishes to exploit the enormous potential opened up by information technology at our age to advance a model for a science data center in astronomy which aims to expand data accessibility and integration to the largest possible extent and with the greatest efficiency for scientific and educational use. Greater access to data means more people producing and benefiting from information, whereas larger integration of related data from different origins means a greater research potential and increased scientific impact. The project of the BSDC is preoccupied, primarily, with providing tools and solutions for the Brazilian astronomical community. It nevertheless capitalizes on extensive international experience, and is developed in full cooperation with the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC), from the Italian Space Agency, granting it an essential ingredient of internationalisation. The BSDC is Virtual Observatory-complient and part of the “Open Universe”, a global initiative built under the auspices of the United Nations.
Highlights
Motivation: A view from Blazar AstrophysicsWe would like to start by providing some concrete motivation for the development of a large-scale, globally integrated astronomical database such as proposed here
Since the BSDC is developed in collaboration with the ASDC and is fully integrated to it, specific functionalities and databases available in each center are readily available for the other
In this document we have presented the BSDC project, part of an international initiative for the development of an open access, online science data center aimed at enabling and actively conducting astrophysics and space-science data-intensive research, through the integration of data and data handling tools in a single, VOcomplient web platform
Summary
We would like to start by providing some concrete motivation for the development of a large-scale, globally integrated astronomical database such as proposed here. The kpc-scale sizes of the sources, contrasted with particle acceleration and cooling timescales as short as few hours or less, means that temporal analysis should span four orders of magnitude, from sub-hour to several years Such observational characteristics clearly demonstrate the need for large integrated databases to provide the required data services which are beyond any individual group’s capabilities to acquire and analyse. EM information such as shown, and multi-messenger data, is becoming increasingly relevant in the field of blazar astrophysics, demanding, for example, software tools and data-services for cross-matching blazar catalogues and high-energy neutrinos and cosmic ray sky maps 9 Such “data-intensive” characteristics present in blazar studies are common to a number of fields within and beyond astrophysics, illustrating the global relevance of a model for an open access, science and web-ready data center
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