Overview & Introduction

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Documentation Verified Last checked: 2025-11-20 Reviewer: Christof Buchbender

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Audience: New users and general audience

The CCAT Data Center is a comprehensive system for managing astronomical observations, data storage, transfer, and analysis for the CCAT observatory hosting the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST).

What is the CCAT Data Center?

The CCAT Data Center provides:

• Centralized Data Management - Unified system for tracking observations and data packages and long-term archiving of data.

• Automated Data Transfer - Efficient movement of data between telescope, archive, and analysis systems

• HPC Integration - Access to high-performance computing resources (RAMSES cluster)

• Web Interface - User-friendly tools for browsing observations and managing data

• RESTful API - Programmatic access for instrument teams and automated workflows

The system is hosted at the IT Center of the University of Cologne and serves the CCAT consortium and scientific collaborators.

If you are new to the CCAT data center and want to learn the basics here are good starting points:

• Getting Started
• How We Work Together
• Why This Document Exists
• Our Tools at a Glance
• Common Workflows
• What Goes Where?
• What NOT to Do
• Managing Wiki Content
• Questions & Improvements
• Core Concepts

The section Core Concepts provides a high-level overview of the data center its layput and the terminology used. It explains core concepts of e.g. ExecutedObsUnit, or RawDataPackage. As well as documents the overall infrastructure and layout of the data center.