Massive Data Handling and Archiving in Astronomical Sky Surveys

Abstract

The improvements on wide-field telescopes and highly sensitive CCD cameras allow astronomers to carry out large scale sky surveys for various scientific purposes. As a consequence, the data volume that a typical sky survey project generates is on the order of gega-bytes daily. Handling and archiving the data have thus become issues which are closely coupled to the efficiency of data reduction and the quality and quantity of the scientific output. In this presentation, we will review how a typical sky survey is performed, what the data handling procedures are, how the data archive is created, and how astronomers extract scientific information from the archive. As examples, we will discuss the set up of the following archives: MAST, Sloan, BATC, and TAOS.