Headquarters and Science Data Management Centre Sites Selected for World’s Largest Gamma-Ray Detector
On 13 June 2016, the governing body of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory gGmbH (CTAO gGmbH), the CTA Council, selected Bologna as the host site of the CTA Headquarters and Berlin - Zeuthen for the Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) from five site candidates.
The Council, composed of shareholders from nine countries (Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) in consultation with associate members (Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden), made the decision after careful consideration of the proposals against criteria that included infrastructure, services and access requirements.
"We are grateful for all of the proposals put forward by the applicants. While each of the candidate sites were suitable options, the Council is confident that Bologna and Zeuthen will be well-equipped to support CTA's long-term operations," said Ulrich Straumann, Managing Director of the CTAO gGmbH.
The CTA Headquarters will be the central office responsible for the overall administration of Observatory operations. Approximately two dozen personnel will provide technical coordination and support, and the main administrative services for the governing bodies and users of the Observatory. The headquarters will be located within the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) premises in a new building shared with the Bologna University Department of Physics and Astronomy. This location gives CTA a home in a word-class scientific environment with state‐of‐the-art facilities, in one of Italy's most attractive and historic cultural centres.
The Science Data Management Centre will coordinate science operations and make CTA's science products available to the worldwide community. An estimated 20 personnel will manage CTA's science coordination including software maintenance and data processing forthe Observatory, which is expected to generate approximately 100 petabytes (PB) of data by the year 2030. (One PB is equal to 1015 bytes of data or one million gigabytes.) The SDMC will be located in a new building complex on the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) campus in Zeuthen, which is conveniently located just outside Berlin – one of Europe's primary capital cities. This location provides extensive access to well-established infrastructure services and a powerful computing centre.
About CTA
CTA (http://www.cta-observatory.org) is a global initiative to build the world's largest and most sensitive high-energy gamma-ray observatory. More than 1,000 scientists and engineers from 32 countries* and over 170 research institutes participate in the CTA project. CTA will serve as an open observatory to a wide physics and astrophysics community and provide a deep insight into the non-thermal, turbulent, high-energy universe. The CTA observatory will detect high-energy radiation with unprecedented accuracy and approximately ten times the sensitivity of current instruments, providing novel insights into some of the most extreme and violent events in the universe. (Read more about CTA's expected performance.) CTA is included in the 2008 roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).
In order to optimize the coverage of the night sky, the CTA Observatory will consist of about 100 telescopes in the southern hemisphere and about 20 telescopes in the northern hemisphere. Site negotiations are underway with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Paranal grounds in Chile and at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Spain. These negotiations are expected to end in 2016 with first telescopes on site in 2018.
*Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States of America, Ukraine
More information:
Prof. Ulrich Straumann, Managing Director CTAO gGmbH
+49-6221-516245; ustraumann@cta-observatory.org
Megan Grunewald, CTA Communications Officer
+49-6221-516471; mgrunewald@cta-observatory.org
Provided by Cherenkov Telsecope Observatory
