An Innovative Science Gateway for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is currently building the next generation, ground-based, very high-energy gamma-ray instrumentation. CTA is expected to collect very large datasets (in the order of petabytes) which will have to be stored, managed and processed. This paper presents a graphical user interface built inside a science gateway aiming at providing CTA-users with a common working framework.

A citizen science exploration of the X-ray transient sky using the EXTraS science gateway

“…In general, a science gateway can be defined as a set of software, data collections, instrumentation and computational capabilities that are integrated -using different technologies and middleware [35] -via a Web portal (or a desktop application) in a user friendly and effective environment supporting the scientific research and education activities of a specific community. Science gateways are gaining an increasing interest in many communities [36,37], such as the astrophysics one [38,39,40], also because one of the best strategies to provide software and data to a scientific community is through a set of services designed following this paradigm. The portal we developed in the project and used for involving citizen scientists [6] is based on this paradigm.…”

The global impact of science gateways, virtual research environments and virtual laboratories

“…Significant effort has been put in this direction by the EC-funded project AARC [55] (and the recently approved AARC2) towards an interoperable architectural design, policy harmonization and community-driven piloting activity. Some examples of AARC-compliant e-infrastructures are the EGI CheckIn Service [56], the INDIGO-Datacloud [57] Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (AAI) and the INAF Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) AAI, which includes the INAF-CTA Science Gateway [58]. The H2020 VRE4EIC project is also dedicated to definition of an interoperability framework that will enable exchange of resources among science gateways more easily [15].…”

Semantic Web Services Composition in the astrophysics domain: Issues and solutions

“…Lemos et al's survey identified SHOP2 as the only approach dealing with SWS and Taverna as the only approach dealing with scientific workflows. To the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of approaches for SWS composition in astrophysics apart from certain specific software specifically designed for specific astrophysical instruments like scientific gateway for the instrument CTA [25]. A more generic SWS composition in this field would be highly appreciated by the community.…”

“…If no information is available for a service regarding one of its outputs, a default neutral value is used during the composition for this service rating. If a quality assessment is found for a service concerning one of the outputs that may be useful for the composition, then this value is used for service selection inside the composition (this parameter is tested in lines [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”