2019-09-05 –, Track 3 (Oteiza)
The IRAM 30m radio telescope is one of the best in the world. The telescope control software, monitoring, data archiving as well as some of the data processing code is written in Python. We will describe how and why Python is used at the telescope.
The IRAM 30m radio telescope is one of the best in the world. It has been in operation non-stop since the mid 80s and is used to observe 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. All of the high-level telescope control software, monitoring, data archiving as well as some of the data processing software is written in Python. This choice, controversial at first, proved to be extremely successful making the IRAM 30m telescope extremely efficient.
This talk will describe how Python is used at the telescope, the reasons behind these choices, lessons learned and future developments.
Drive your 30m telescope using Python for fun and profit
Python Skill Level –professional
Domain Expertise –none
Domains –Astronomy, Scientific data flow and persistence
Launched genomics data processing platform for the largest food company in the world. Helped shoot satellites in orbit at NASA. Optimised numerical weather forecast models on 200k cores. Asteroid 22435 Pierfederici named in recognition of his contributions to astronomy software development. Author of "Distributed Computing with Python", 2016 PACKT Publishing.
Loves Python.