Astro Data Lab Science Platform at Eight - From Data to Discovery

What: Splinter Session at AAS 247 in Phoenix, AZ
When: Monday, January 5, 2026 | 10:00 AM MT - 11:30 AM MT
Where: Phoenix Convention Center, 121 B

Summary

Overview and Motivation for the Session

Astronomy is undergoing a transformation driven by deep wide-field surveys and all-sky simulations producing petabyte-scale data. In this era of big and complex data and instantaneous time-domain astronomy, platforms that democratize access to high-quality data and computing resources are becoming critical infrastructure for discovery. Astro Data Lab, operated by NSF NOIRLab, has become a leading science platform, providing seamless access to rich datasets, advanced query tools, and analysis environments that enable research otherwise impossible without major local infrastructure.

Since its launch eight years ago, Astro Data Lab has supported diverse discoveries—from thousands of new asteroids and hundreds of brown dwarfs to the study of rare transients and large galaxy samples. Its web interface, database query engine, image cutouts, catalog cross-matching, and Jupyter environments allow users to move fluidly from data access to publication. By removing the need for local high-performance computing, it lowers barriers for students, early-career scientists, and smaller institutions.

Today, the platform serves over 4,300 registered users, hosts 200TB of catalogs, 40M spectra (including DESI), nearly 3PB of images, and processes an average of 58k data queries daily. It supports some of the largest optical surveys, including the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the NOIRLab Source Catalog. Looking ahead, plans include expanded support for time-domain analysis, scalable compute for AI and machine learning, and enhanced interoperability with other services—critical as LSST/Rubin Observatory data come online.

We propose a splinter session to highlight scientific achievements enabled by Astro Data Lab, share technical innovations, and engage the community in shaping its future. This session will bring together scientists, developers, educators, and users to showcase how Astro Data Lab exemplifies what a community science platform should be—open, technologically powerful, and scientifically transformative.

Session Format

We propose a 90-minute splinter session with eight short talks followed by a Q&A discussion. The session is structured to be informative for practicing astronomers interested to learn what the Astro Data Lab science platform can do to support their research.

Introduction: Astro Data Lab today and our vision for the future (10 min)
Overview of the Data Lab science platform—its mission, current capabilities, impact on the scientific community, and roadmap for the future.
Publishing your survey: How to get your data into Data Lab (12 min)
How survey PIs and dataset creators can publish through Data Lab, and how ingestion of new data products is orchestrated.
Asking users: Insights from the first annual Data Lab user survey (10 min)
Results from Data Lab’s recent first user survey, sharing feedback and suggestions on performance, impact, user experience, and desired capabilities.
Broadening the audience: Spanish language notebooks and content (8 min)
With many of our users in the Americas, Data Lab is translating learning content into Spanish to ease entry for students and researchers.
Going spectral: Spectroscopy with SPARCL (10 min)
NOIRLab's Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) developed the SPARCL service, which hosts SDSS, eBOSS, and DESI spectra and derived quantities, accessible through flexible APIs and a Python client. This talk introduces the power of SPARCL.
Did we catch that? ANTARES alert broker and full-scale integration of follow-up capabilities at NOIRLab (10 min)
CSDC and the University of Arizona built the ANTARES alert broker and tested it on LSST precursor surveys such as ZTF. Dedicated follow-up observations will be needed to characterize important time-domain events. NOIRLab is developing an end-to-end integrated follow-up system, dubbed GOATS, which this talk will introduce.
Data reduction in the browser: Gemini DRAGONS pipelines at Data Lab (10 min)
Gemini Observatory's DRAGONS package supports data reduction for all of its instruments. To eliminate the hurdles of installation and data access, the US-NGO and Data Lab teams have developed Jupyter notebooks demonstrating how to use DRAGONS entirely within a web browser, through notebooks at Data Lab.
In the classroom: Teaching survey astronomy on a big data platform (10 min)
Data Lab supports the complete archival data life cycle, from data exploration, through sample selection, data analysis, discovery, visualization, to paper preparation. These abilities make it an excellent platform for teaching data science at all levels of astronomy education. This talk will present how survey data science is taught at the University of Chicago using Data Lab.
Q&A with the audience (10 min)
All speakers will happily answer questions from the audience.

Summary

Overview and Motivation for the Session

Session Format

Introduction: Astro Data Lab today and our vision for the future (10 min)
Overview of the Data Lab science platform—its mission, current capabilities, impact on the scientific community, and roadmap for the future.

Publishing your survey: How to get your data into Data Lab (12 min)
How survey PIs and dataset creators can publish through Data Lab, and how ingestion of new data products is orchestrated.

Asking users: Insights from the first annual Data Lab user survey (10 min)
Results from Data Lab’s recent first user survey, sharing feedback and suggestions on performance, impact, user experience, and desired capabilities.

Broadening the audience: Spanish language notebooks and content (8 min)
With many of our users in the Americas, Data Lab is translating learning content into Spanish to ease entry for students and researchers.

Going spectral: Spectroscopy with SPARCL (10 min)
NOIRLab's Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) developed the SPARCL service, which hosts SDSS, eBOSS, and DESI spectra and derived quantities, accessible through flexible APIs and a Python client. This talk introduces the power of SPARCL.

Did we catch that? ANTARES alert broker and full-scale integration of follow-up capabilities at NOIRLab (10 min)
CSDC and the University of Arizona built the ANTARES alert broker and tested it on LSST precursor surveys such as ZTF. Dedicated follow-up observations will be needed to characterize important time-domain events. NOIRLab is developing an end-to-end integrated follow-up system, dubbed GOATS, which this talk will introduce.

Data reduction in the browser: Gemini DRAGONS pipelines at Data Lab (10 min)
Gemini Observatory's DRAGONS package supports data reduction for all of its instruments. To eliminate the hurdles of installation and data access, the US-NGO and Data Lab teams have developed Jupyter notebooks demonstrating how to use DRAGONS entirely within a web browser, through notebooks at Data Lab.

In the classroom: Teaching survey astronomy on a big data platform (10 min)
Data Lab supports the complete archival data life cycle, from data exploration, through sample selection, data analysis, discovery, visualization, to paper preparation. These abilities make it an excellent platform for teaching data science at all levels of astronomy education. This talk will present how survey data science is taught at the University of Chicago using Data Lab.

Q&A with the audience (10 min)
All speakers will happily answer questions from the audience.