Day two from ADASS was a little slow, focussing on space-based observatories and the virtual observatory. Spitzer featured heavily in the space-based session. They have a lot of data coming down from the observatory (one of their instruments can pump out 27,000 observations a day) and it all has to be processed. The theme to handle this seems to involve throwing a lot of hardware at the problem. Spitzer has 32 “drone” computers on the ground to handle data processing. There’s a few quirks with their data reduction process (Spitzer doesn’t have a shutter so it can’t take proper dark frames — frames that are normally taken with the shutter closed to determine the amount of dark current you have on your detector), but nothing really special, other than the number of computers they have.
The Mars Exploration Rovers are similar in that each day they have to reduce about 1 gigabit of data in 30 minutes once a day. They have six dual-processor systems to do the job. They produce all sorts of interesting maps — slope maps and maps that show where the rovers can go to get the maximum amount of light on their solar panels, those maps were pretty cool.
The last three-quarters of the day was spent listening to virtual observatory talks. It’s amazing that virtual observatories can get a hell of a lot of money and manpower to work on their stuff. One group, can’t remember which, has 26 FTEs on it. A crazy number of people, and they all seem to be just spinning their wheels. I swear I’d heard all the same stuff at ADASS XII two years ago in Baltimore.
In the evening was the conference dinner. It was a little cheeky in that it cost fifty bucks for a buffet meal. Not even any free alcohol. And during the presentation (cool scientific results from the Mars Exploration Rovers, again) the projector we were watching kept blinking out. For the price we pay to be here you’d think they could get a simple thing like a projector working.
