Student Teacher Astronomy Resource Server (STARS). SEO outreach has its own server on the UofC campus. The server is used for file sharing, data reduction and analysis and web hosting. To learn how to use the server, look at the Guide to the Stars Server.
Thanks to Stone Edge Observatory for providing the funds to buy this server.
The STARS server is at the University of Chicago and managed by Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu.
Table of Contents:
To set up a server to provide web services for Stone Edge data distribution and for the the UChicago / Yerkes Outreach community in general.
Improve data reduction pipeline - See Image Pipeline.
Remove inactive user accounts
Using Stars as a web server for outreach pages using the wordpress platform (?) #NOT HAPPENING
Moving Yerkes 24" images and Stone Edge data to STARS. May integrate with the World Wide Telescope program to provide the images as part of a larger database. See below. #IN PROGRESS
Idea: Make server at Yerkes that mirrors mollify folders every night. #REPLACED BY STARSBASE
The machine is called stars.uchicago.edu, IP address 128.135.20.60. The current RSA key fingerprint (for secure login and secure copy) is ea:59:8a:b1:20:b0:ed:1f:bc:e8:74:40:6a:fa:3b:83.
Specifications:
2U - redundant power supply
Dual 8 core 2.0 GHz AMD Opteron CPUs
24 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 Ram
Hardware RAID card with 8 3TB drives attached
Web Data is under /var/www/html. Only this folder should be visible from the internet.
Project data is under /data. Subfolders are:
/data/images: FITS images from various telescopes. Format is: images/observatory/telescope/year/date/object/fitsfile.fits. For example: images/yerkes/24/2013/2913-02-06/M45. The folder is on the Filemanager under images. It is also shared publicly under stars.uchicago.edu/images. There are several special subfolders:
queue: Files taken with the SEO queue
Archive: Older data on the StarDrive server
Temp: Temporary user / project data on the StarDrive server
/data/outreach: Files and other data related to outreach at Yerkes.
For example: Lesson plans, talks, information on outreach events like family nights and such.
Idea: have a users folder for each person to have her/his own files.
/data/scripts: Scripts that are running on the stars server, and associated relevant data. Some subfolders may be web accessible.
For example the IASC file aggregator, the 24inch sensor box and the HAWC webviewer.
/data/filemanager: directory where Mollify system files are stored. Linked to /var/www/filemanager. Contains Mollify roots listed below:
StudentGroups: folder that contains data/docs for various student groups. (i.e. SOFIA, tech group, asteroids, etc.)
Users: folder which contains subfolders for individual users. Used for personal (yet Yerkes-related) information.
/data/public: web accessible public folder on STARS. All files in this folder are accessible on stars.uchicago.edu/public. This folder is accessible on Molify File Server under public.
Do not put anything here that should not be seen by the entire world.
science: for science-related files and programs. Contains code for IASC program.
telescopes: for telescope programs/data.
hawc: for HAWC data.
Personal files and projects are under /home in your personal folder.
Problem Uploading? If you have problem uploading files the permissions for the folder you're working with may not be set correctly. Make sure the group permission is set to the "stoneedge" group and that the permissions give write access to group users.
The image files can be accessed under stars.uchicago.edu/images. and can be accesed in in the webviewer (see below).
The pipeline reduces the data, adds WCS coordinates and does flux calibration. A web-based data viewer is also necessary. Automatic JPEG creator from FITS.
More details on running the pipeline by yourself is on the Pipeline User Manual, details on how the pipeline is run on Stars is under Image Pipeline.
FITS Web Viewer: The program was developed by the HAWC project. For details see the WebFitsViewer page on github under github.com/berthoud/webfitsviewer or talk to Marc. The following folders contain data for it:
The /data/scripts/fitsview folder has the main program and the configuration files.
The /data/images/fitsview folder has the static and temporary files.
The software uses several pipeline parts from the Image Pipeline: The drp base package and the pipeline configuration file.
We have several fits viewers installed on stars:
Stonedge 2017: stars.uchicago.edu/fitsview17 for data under images/StoneEdge/0.5meter/2017
Stonedge 2018: stars.uchicago.edu/fitsview18 for data under images/StoneEdge/0.5meter/2018
Stonedge 2019: stars.uchicago.edu/fitsview19 for data under images/StoneEdge/0.5meter/2019
Stonedge 2020: stars.uchicago.edu/fitsview20 for data under images/StoneEdge/0.5meter/2020
Class Data: stars.uchicago.edu/queue for data under images/queue. This FITS Viewer is for classes taught at University of Chicago.
Yerkes 24 2018: stars.uchicago.edu/Yerkes24view18 for data under images/Yerkes/24inch/2018
Yerkes 24 2019: stars.uchicago.edu/Yerkes24view19 for data under images/Yerkes/24inch/2019
FOAH Data: stars.uchicago.edu/FOAHview20 for data under images/FOAH/Officina_Stellare_Veloce_RH_200/2020
Data Storage:
New folder for SEO data under /data/images/StoneEdge/0.5meter/YYYY
Fits Viewer:
Make a new entry for fitsviewer instance in fitsview/config/webviewStars_config.txt
Copy fitsview/src/mainstars.py to fitsview/src/mainYYYY.py
Request an update from Valeri for the apache configuration
Data Reduction:
Make new /data/images/StoneEdge/0.5meter/YYYY/Masters folder and within Bias, Dark and Flat folders.
To re-reduce old B/D/F data: update keywords in config file. Rerun pipemodes masterbias/dark/flat as shown in the crontab.
To access the server go to stars.uchicago.edu/filemanager. The server uses the Mollify File Manager and is running on the Yerkes STARS server.
To log in, use your individual account (if you have one) or use the group accounts for teachers (YerkesTeacher) and students (YerkesStudent). See Yerkes Computing for more information on these accounts.
To find help, go to this page AND scroll down do "Using Mollify".
The folders structure is as follows:
public: This folder contains files that are publicly accessible. Anyone can access that folder under stars.uchicago.edu/public. Do not put anything there that should not be seen by the entire world. Example of how to move images into public from Stone Edge: rsync -avz -e ssh GRB_1027 user@stars._:/data/public/FITSimages/StoneEdge/2013images.
stars: This folder is only accessible through the file manager (mollify).
Users: Make your folder there for your personal files
StarsAtYerkesTeachers: This folder is for teachers to share data
StudentGroups: Students can share and store data in this folder.
Outreach: This folder is for sharing and storing data for outreach projects and events
Research: Research project data can be stored here
images: This folder contains all images taken with some Yerkes Telescopes (details see above).
People with ssh access to the Yerkes STARS server can also access all file server data directly.
Suggestions / Ideas: Please add any ideas you have about improving the server.
Preview for text files and images (png, jpg, gif)
Can we add comments to files?
Can we search for file contents / comments?
Information about setting up and configuring the mollify server on Stars is under Mollify Setup.
We are putting Stoneedge image data on the Stars server at the University of Chicago. To collaborate on this server we also have an account at basecamp.com/.
Virtual Observatory
The Virtual Observatory is basically a centralized list of worldwide servers with astronomical data, connected by a specific protocol. Each server is registered at the VAO Registry.
To publish data into the virtual observatory: Look at wiki.ivoa.net/IVOA/PublishingInTheVONew on the VOA wiki for details:
Interesting for us are existing toolkits maybe VO-Dance, SAADA or DALServer. They can all be installed without programing. These are all content providers, linking images to the VO. They still need an image database which can be SQL.
To look for images at the VO, use the vao viewer at StSci: vao.stsci.edu/discover.
The stardrive.uchicago.edu server acts as archive and temporary storage space for ongoing data reduction. The server can be reached with rsync using the starguest account. Both Archive and Temp drives are mounted on Stars under /data/images/Archive and /data/images/Temp.
24 Inch Telescope Data: Graphs of the conditions inside the dome is available under here.
The old calendar is under bussard.yerkes.uchicago.edu/Outreach/YerkesEventsCalendar. If you don't have an account use YaaysVisitor and yaays2008.
The new account will be under stars at yerkes google apps.
The NEW calendar is hosted by Google and is sent through StarsBase. The files are in the /custom/scripts folder.
If you can't access it, use the 'yerkesstar' account from starsatyerkes.net.
StarsBase will regularly download the calendar to e-mail to interested parties and send copies to the printer.
If interested, email raphael.dawis@gmail.com or the current Raspberry Pi administrator.
Bugs / Upgrades:
A event at the end of the month withing 6 hours (difference between CST and GMT) will crash the program as it will be returned by EventGrab on the following month.
Uses version 2 of the Google Calendar API, Version 3 is out, but the authentication and grabbing process looks different than currently used version.
HAWC data: Currently data from the HAWC FS5 test is available under stars.uchicago.edu/hawc. The data is under /data/hawc/webfolder.
HAWC Web View Demo: A demo version of the HAWC web viewer is under stars.uchicago.edu/hawc/webview. This web viewer has the following files and configuration:
Code Files are under /data/hawc/webview. Saimilar structure as other places but with pipeline folder inside.
Configuration file is webview_demo_config.txt and the data folder is demodata. main_demo.py is the main script.
2022 Jan: Set up automatic mounting of Archive and Temp on StarDrive
2020 Apr: Set up anonymous FTP - Valeri
2020 Jan: Set up multi webview instances code - MGB
To access, open your file manager, and connect to server or network. /local is the local drive, and /stars is the mirror
Server IP: 128.135.40.94
Server Name: STARSBASE
Windows URIs:
\\128.135.40.94\local
\\128.135.40.94\stars
Mac/ UNIX-ish URIs:
smb://128.135.40.94/local
smb://128.135.40.94/stars
Further information is found in the subpage found here.
!!! The blog has not been used for several years and all images have been transferred to the Stone Edge Observatory page Galery. !!!
To access, http://stars.uchicago.edu/blog. Will be used to exhibit telescope pictures taken by students, primarily from Stoneedge.
Instructions can be found by clicking "Serendipity Blog" above and then downloading one of the files on the next page.
The blog will be used for students to upload their Stoneedge images. To do that they need to upload to following information:
The picture they took (JPEG with information in the JPEG header)
Observer / Author information: Name of person(s) who took the images and worked on them.
How the image was taken (which telescope, exposure time, filters). How the image was processed and using which programs.
Name and description of the object that is in the image.
Personal notes such as: What do you find important, do you like about this image? What did you learn from this work?
The server will host the IASC Files page that is currently hosted by the University of Chicago main astronomy server.