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 | RNP’s staff visits Soar telescopeRemote instrumentation techniques are shown to RNP’s professionals On September 8, RNP’s director and two professionals from the Innovations Management visited Soar observatory (Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope), in the Chilean Andes, for the first time. Soar is one of the remote instrumentation platforms that is being considered to integrate the Ringrid (Remote Instrumentation in Next-Generation Grids), a project from the European Union’s Information Society Technologies (IST) program, due to start in October. Brazil and Chile are among the 10 countries participating in this project, through Clara initiative (Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks), represented in Brazil by RNP. 
Designed to produce images of the universe with higher quality than that of any other observatory in the world in this category, Soar has been functioning since 2004, financed by Brazil and the United States. Its conception has made astronomers’ jobs much easier. The images generated in Chile are captured in faraway regions in Brazil. At USP, for instance, researchers at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG) can already observe astrophysical phenomena on computer screens virtually live, thanks to the use of advanced communication networks that permit access to Soar. Institutions connected to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), such as the National Astrophysics Laboratory (Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica - LNA) and the National Institute of Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais - Inpe), besides USP and UFRGS, participate in Soar’s scientific and directive boards. The goal of the project is to extend remote observation of stars and galaxies to these and other brazilian institutions. “Seven more remote observation rooms will be built, and RNP will be responsible for their connection, through Ipê network. That is why it was so important to talk to Communication and Information Technology professionals at the observatory, so that we could better understand the remote use of their instruments. We need to make sure that communication will happen perfectly”, explains Michael Stanton, RNP’s Innovations director. Brazil invested R$30 million in the telescope, which has a 4.1 meter opening. In practical terms, it allows researchers in the country to observe the stars 104 nights per year, that is to say, 31% of the total Cosmos investigation time. RNP and Reuna: joint Ringrid projectsBesides visiting Soar, RNP’s staff participated in a series of events related to computational grids in Chile. On September 2, they attended a meeting promoted by Reuna, the Chilean academic network, in order to discuss Ringrid project. The aim of the meeting was to prepare the working project of the two partner countries in Ringrid, where they represent Clara network. Due to begin in October, Ringrid will last 18 months. In this period, representatives from tem countries in Europe and Latin America (Poland, Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Italy and the United Kingdom) will catalogue, evaluate and make systematization proposals for the use of remote instrumentation in computational grids.
The grids enable users to access computers, instruments, databases and storage resources located in different places in an integrated way. The massive aggregation of these resources, in transcontinental infrastructures, permits international scientific collaboration partners to engage in large-scale projects, which wouldn’t be feasible in local facilities. Among the Brazilian institutions involved in Ringrid are LNA and the National Laboratory of Synchrotron Light (Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron - LNLS), both kept with resources from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT). The synchrotron light source and the electronic microscopes at LNLS will be some of the instruments studied. The more widespread adoption of the remote use of instruments, one of the aims of Ringrid, will facilitate the routine of researchers at other institutions, and it will reduce the costs of experiments and observations since these people will have access to the use of the instruments without physical displacements, saving time and travel expenses. Read more information about Soar at http://www.soartelescope.org About Ringrid, access http://www.ringrid.eu [RNP, 09.19.2006] |
