Chile has a privileged place for astronomical observation. The Atacama Desert is the best place to stargaze because of climate conditions. Astronomical community generates 40% of astronomical observation in this South American country and 70% of telescopes in the world are there.
In term of data, that will represent 6.5 exabytes in 2022, an amount higher than total data of Twitter and Youtube.
An alliance with AWS to watch the Sky
Now Chile has established an alliance between Amazon Web Services (AWS) to consolidate, analyze real-time, and archive astronomy data streams from all wavelengths across all Chilean observatories in the Atacama Desert. AWS will host the images and data that are recorded and downloaded from Chile’s world-renowned telescopes, which are continuously studying space.
The Data Observatory’s mission is to work as a nonprofit organization hosting a large-scale public dataset, known as a data lake, on AWS that will enable maximum utilization of astronomical data by the global scientific community, private industry, and the public, and will facilitate data access, analysis, visualization, and governance. Part of AWS’s role in the five-year project will be helping the Data Observatory develop solutions and applications using the open data hosted through the AWS Public Dataset Program to provide unique experiences to anyone interested in astronomy, like a virtual reality immersion experience to witness the universe in 3D, using Amazon Sumerian.
AWS will provide AWS Credits for research, support, and education through a variety of programs that are already available in Latin America, including AWS Educate, AWS Academy, and AWS Training and Certification to support the team of data scientists working in Chilean observatories.
Amazon mentioned in its blog “AWS’s participation in this project is just a part of several initiatives and the long-term commitment that the company has with Chile and Latin America, uniting private and public sectors through the power of cloud computing services to foster IT modernization, innovation, and workforce development”.