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Introduction

"All astronomical observatories in the world have in common the needs to prepare and plan observations, organise and execute night operations, then store, package and distribute data."

Cédric Foellmi, Ph.D.
(former ESO Fellow in La Silla , and Arcsecond Founder)

Arcsecond's Observatory Portals allow every observatory, science group, university, planetarium, astro club to handle all the activities associated with astronomical observations, in a modular way. It is a dedicated space with an unlimited number of members, easy membership permissions and capabilities, where one can store and build a modern data archive based on APIs, and furthermore the whole life and history of an Observatory.

[ICONS]

We are very proud to have been already entrusted by 3 organisations on multiple continents: OMA in Chile, ARIEL-Survey (between France and Tasmania) and the Montréal Planétarium (Espace pour la Vie, Canada).

Portals specific features

First, Arcsecond's Observatory Portals offer to all its members the same coverage of the astronomical observations' lifecycle: Explore, Plan, Observe, Store, Distribute.

In addition, Arcsecond's Observatory Portals offer the following:

  • A unique place to record the history of all observations, observers, targets and observing nights, and build the data archive of your Observatory, even if you have existing data located elsewhere.
  • An unlimited number of members, at no additional charge, with an easy-to-manage 5-levels permission scheme to easily control who is doing what, and has access to what.
  • The possibility to easily share data with the public, with a customizable public page,
  • An Observatory Schedule, to manage what is happening in your Observatory over time. The schedule can be customized between a standard calendar mode, a telescopes timeline or an observers timeline, including recurring events.
  • 100GB of free Data Storage to start with Finding Charts & Data Previews (instead of 10GB for astronomers).
  • A dedicated subdomain, under the Arcsecond umbrella.

Important notes

If you want Arcsecond to set up a dedicated cloud infrastructure specifically for your portal, contact us.

Likewise, data are stored in the U.S. by default. But if you need or prefer a default storage in another region, we will be happy to set it up for you.

MIT Licensed