African Research Cloud

Dr. Brad Frank joins IDIA as Associate Director, Astronomy Operations

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Brad Frank in this position that will ensure that the research cloud is able to deliver on the needs of the astronomy research community, in particular for MeerKAT projects that are analysed on the ilifu facility. Dr. Frank first got involved with IDIA in 2016. Back then IDIA had just launched, … Read More

IDIA “processMeerKAT” Pipelines v.1.1 release

The IDIA Pipelines team is pleased to announce V1.1 of the IDIA Pipeline. The package uses CASA/MPICASA to do the initial cross-calibration (1GC, a’priori) of MeerKAT data on the ilifu SLURM Cluster. This release implements the concurrent cross-calibration of spectral windows on the ilifu cluster and includes several tweaks to improve performance and stability. This release brings several scientific improvements … Read More

IDIA/ilifu MeerKAT Open Time Projects 2020

The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) invites proposals from researchers at IDIA partner institutions and other South African institutions to conduct MeerKAT Open Time Project research using the Ilifu Cloud Computing Research Facility. Expressions of interest will be reviewed, and successful applicants will be provided a letter of support, which can be included in the associated MeerKAT observing … Read More

South African-European Federated Cloud Piloting Meeting

The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) recently participated in the Federated Cloud Piloting at Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Italy from 10-11 September 2019. The purpose of the meeting was to launch the pilot demonstration project of a South African – European federated cloud to support collaboration on SKA Pathfinder data intensive large programs between South African and European research teams. This meeting … Read More

Multi-Wavelength Astronomy in the Cloud Workshop

The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and the South African Astronomical Observatory would like to invite you to a workshop about multi-wavelength astronomy, current and future data challenges, and how cloud computing technology can help to address them. The Multi-Wavelength Astronomy in the Cloud Workshop will be held at the SAAO Auditorium on 26 August 2019 from 09h00 – 17h00. The aim … Read More