Jordan Collier (IDIA, University of Cape Town)

Jordan Collier Colloquium: The MeerKAT tool belt: a waist of data

Marsfield lecture theatre

Abstract

A number of new tools have been developed or adopted to deal with MeerKAT data at the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA), Cape Town. I will present a number of these tools, including those for processing, visualisation, and data transfer, giving hands on demonstrations where possible. One particular focus will be the IDIA MeerKAT pipeline, a fully automated end-to-end, full Stokes CASA-based pipeline that is efficient, flexible, scalable, and user-friendly, having been widely tested and documented. Our unique setup uses an IDIA cloud-based platform running on hardware provided by the ilifu national facility, taking advantage of cluster-level parallelism, resource management and software containers. Altogether this represents a pathfinder science regional data centre, and a good framework for solving many of the broader challenges of the SKA. I will also present an update on recent MeerKAT data and operations, with a particular focus on the MIGHTEE project.