From today (August 11th) up until Friday the yearly Perseids meteor shower will have its peak. This phenomenon is not only interesting for amateur astronomers, professional astronomers will be observing them as well.
STORIES
In Humans of ASTRON we share stories about the people at ASTRON. Who are the people behind the discoveries and innovations and also, who are the people that make sure that everything runs smoothly? In this second part of the series, we’ll be sharing the story of Jorrit Siebenga, who joined ASTRON in 2017 as research instrument maker.
Throughout the history of astronomy, women have played essential roles towards astronomical breakthroughs. In this article we highlight but a few of these women identified in history from 1600 to the modern era.
In Humans of ASTRON we share stories about the people at ASTRON. Who are the people behind the discoveries and innovations and also, who are the people that make sure that everything runs smoothly? In this second part of the series, we’ll be sharing the story of Emanuela Orrù, support scientist at ASTRON since 2012.
DAILY IMAGE
LTA Data Volume Reduction
© SDCO
Retirement Cycles 0-6
To prepare LOFAR infrastructure for the LOFAR2.0 data challenges, the deletion of data from Cycle 0 to Cycle 6 that does not have legacy value was approved for deletion from all LTA sites. Through notifications, users were given the opportunity to retrieve data from these early LOFAR cycles. As a result, 9 PB of storage space was recovered.
LDV
Ongoing LOFAR Data Valorization (LDV) activities continue to improve data management and storage optimization, through application at a scale of compression algorithms that are now available and deduplication of archive content. These efforts have freed approximately 7 PB of storage, with additional multi-PB savings expected by 2027, supporting efficient LTA operations and LOFAR2.0 requirements.
Data Transfer
The expansion of the LTA by adding storage at data centers, along with variations in available storage at each site and operational placement policies for observing projects, has resulted in an uneven distribution of data across LTA sites. To rebalance utilization, the LDV project initiated a data migration activity. By the end of 2025, 3.4 PB of data had been successfully transferred from the SURF data center to the FZJ data center. The migration was performed using File Transfer Service (FTS) and represents the first multi-petabyte data transfer between LTA sites, enabling future large-scale data rebalancing efforts.
As a result of these efforts, operational costs are reduced by lowering the LTA storage, which also contributes to reducing the impact of environmental footprint of data.
EVENTS
CAREERS
