University of Barcelona Institute of Cosmos Sciences: Unveiling the mysteries of our galaxy with Google Cloud
About ICCUB
The Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona is devoted to the research of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. Created in 2006, it receives €4m annual funding and produces about 300 scientific publications per year.
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About Altostratus
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Google Cloud has provided the scalable infrastructure needed for the ICCUB to participate in an historic project to create an accurate and detailed three-dimensional map of the Milky Way.
Google Cloud results
- The ICCUB team now stores and analyzes a catalog of two billion stars downloaded daily from the Gaia satellite
- Without flexible cloud capability, participation in the groundbreaking study would have been impossible
- The ICCUB is now playing a leading role discovering how the Milky Way will evolve
Pioneer in using cloud services for astronomy research
Go outside on a clear night and it’s difficult not to be overawed by the countless stars that punctuate the heavens. Not to be discouraged, however, the European Space Agency (ESA) has set itself the daunting task of producing an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of our galaxy, featuring nearly two billion stars.
To achieve this, the ESA blasted a €700 million satellite named Gaia into orbit in 2013, equipped with a telescope so powerful it can measure the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1,000km. Gaia is also packed with an array of sensors which are gradually revealing the secrets of stars. This includes each star’s size, temperature, what they are made of and how they were born. Gaia is also investigating the evolution of the Milky Way and the nature of dark matter. One of the ways it is achieving this is by examining the links between galaxy collisions and star formation.
This mind-boggling project has generated huge amounts of raw scientific data. Every day, Gaia’s camera captures around 70 million images, and beams between 45 and 100 gigabytes of data back down to earth. This satellite telemetry must be analyzed and translated into rich scientific insight if the Gaia mission is to successfully unravel the full mysteries of the Milky Way.
Storage and analysis of such data sets are out of reach of conventional IT workflows. It simply isn’t cost effective to download that much data and store it locally. Any attempt to do so would involve capital investment in servers and associated infrastructure running into tens of millions of euros.
Analyzing big data on an interstellar scale
The ESA’s Gaia project has not only launched cutting-edge technology into space, however, it has also prompted IT experts to radically rethink how they analyze big data back down on earth. As one of the research centers analyzing Gaia’s torrent of data, The University of Barcelona Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) understood that it would have been impossible to carry out the scientific exploitation of the Gaia data using conventional on-premise data centers, because the cost of buying the necessary servers would have been prohibitive.
Unwilling to miss out on the project of a lifetime, the ICCUB considered how else they could provide the computing resources necessary to exploit the huge volume and complexity of astrophysical data generated by the Gaia mission. They landed on the public cloud.
A defining moment for European scientific research
ICCUB’s adoption of Google Cloud, along with its big data platforms and AI services, proved to be a defining moment. It was a pioneering use of commercial cloud infrastructure by astronomy academics in Europe. Ever since, it has showcased the valuable benefits of public cloud to the wider scientific community.
The Gaia/ICCUB collaboration isn’t the first time the astronomical community has used Google Cloud outside of Europe, however. The Chile-based Rubin Observatory, the world’s biggest telescope with a camera, is currently using the service to store 1,000 images of the sky being taken every night for ten years. Other astronomy projects harnessing the public cloud include, The Minor Planet Center, Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in California and the Event Horizon Telescope.
According to Dr Xavier Luri, director of the ICCUB, however, "collaborating with Google Cloud has changed the paradigm for serving the computing needs of the ICCUB." Provision of IT resources is no longer about buying new hardware, he says. Instead, it is more flexible. When complex, data-heavy computing tasks are necessary, the ICCUB team can now spin up additional processing power on demand thanks to Google Cloud. This flexibility avoids the need for expensive on-premise hardware, which would otherwise stand idle when it is not needed.
"Collaborating with Google Cloud has changed the paradigm for serving the computing needs of the ICCUB. Access to Compute Engine VMs with the latest HW processors has helped us to run simulations in parallel and reduce calculation time from more than 1 year on a local machine to 3 weeks."
—Dr Xavier Luri, Director, ICCUBGrowth through collaboration
The ICCUB’s participation in the Gaia project has also helped the department achieve many of its other key institutional goals, such as attracting highly qualified research staff, supporting high-quality teaching through its master’s degree and doctoral programs and the wider sharing of scientific knowledge from its areas of expertise such as astrophysics, particle physics, and cosmology.
Other organizations collaborating with ICCUB include AI specialists Pervasive Technologies, which supplies the algorithms necessary to analyze the space telescope’s data, and Telefónica Tech, which is sharing its considerable cloud resources management expertise.
For Altostratus, part of Telefónica Tech, the project involved the provisioning of Google Cloud infrastructures from on-premise environments and from supercomputing centers such as BSC, using services like Virtual Machines or High Efficiency Database. To take full advantage of GCP capabilities, the IaaS and Data team conducted trainings to the ICCUB technical team on the new AI and analytics resources, such as Vertex AI or BigQuery. Altostratus, as an integrator partner, was responsible for deploying the cloud infrastructure following Google Cloud best practices, through a Cloud Foundation. The IaaS team also provided technical support and supervised the correct development of the project. On the other hand, the Altostratus Data team provided specialized training to the ICCUB technical team through workshops focused on Vertex AI and BigQuery technologies.
Many questions the ICCUB and ESA have about the Milky Way are now being answered thanks to the big data generated by the Gaia satellite. "We hope the ICCUB’s collaboration with Google Cloud will be the first pioneering step towards the wide scale adoption of cloud computing among the European scientific research community, opening the door to a galaxy of new opportunities," Dr Luri concludes.
"We hope the ICCUB’s collaboration with Google Cloud will be the first pioneering step towards the widescale adoption of cloud computing among the European scientific research community, opening the door to a galaxy of new opportunities."
—Dr Xavier Luri, Director, ICCUBTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About ICCUB
The Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona is devoted to the research of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics. Created in 2006, it receives €4m annual funding and produces about 300 scientific publications per year.
About Altostratus
Altostratus Cloud Consulting is a Google Cloud partner for Southern Europe, and a full-cycle cloud services provider.