Data Lab—A community science platform

Abstract Data Lab is an open-access science platform developed and operated by the Community and Science Data Center (CSDC) at NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab). It serves public photometric survey datasets, provides interactive and programmatic data access, and SQL/ADQL query capabilities via TAP. Users also receive generous storage allocations with VOSpace and MyDB, co-located with our data holdings. A host of services such as cross-matching, image cutouts via SIA, file services for survey data, and a Jupyter notebook interface for analysis close to the data complement the mission statement. Launched in 2017 at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Data Lab supports a base of over 1,300 registered users, processes on average 15,000 queries daily, serves over 50 TB of photometric catalogs, and provides access to over 2 PB of survey image products at NOIRLab’s Science Data Archive. Future development will include support for massive spectroscopic datasets and for processing of alert streams generated by e.g. ZTF and LSST. Users will also be able to create and administrate ad hoc user groups for shared data access and scientific analysis, and will enjoy containerized services and notebook spaces.