Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems XXXIV

Asteroid Discovery with THOR on the Noirlab Source Catalog: An Engineering Perspective
2024-11-13 , Aula Magna

In this presentation, we discuss the deployment of the THOR asteroid discovery algorithm on the NOIRLab Source Catalog Data Release 2 (NSC DR2). We will focus on the technical challenges encountered and the software, architecture and infrastructure used to address them. We discuss the data extraction and filtering challenges associated with the NSC DR2 dataset. We cover memory management and handling the computational demands of THOR. We will also cover the execution strategy using Dagster for orchestration, Kubernetes spot instances, result validation, and our open-source tools: quivr, adam_core, and mpcq. The talk will conclude with future work implications, notably in relation to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s LSST.

See also: Slides - pdf (3.1 MB)