The Gemini Science Archive: Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract. The most recent addition to the services provided by the Cana-dian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) is the Gemini Science Archive (GSA).Developed as a collaborative effort with the Gemini Observatory and releasedin September 2004, the GSA provides the scientific community with the toolsrequired for effective online access to data collected by both Gemini telescopes.This paper provides a summary of the current capabilities of the GSA and dis-cusses some of the advanced capabilities to be developed in the near future. 1. IntroductionWell before the Gemini telescopes were ready for scientific operation, the GSAwas foreseen to play an integral part of the planning, observation, calibration,data reduction, and data distribution systems in operation at the two Geminisites. This foresight allowed for the implementation of a number of novel ap-proaches to data handling and processing in the CADC’s development of theGSA. These include• support for data produced by the telescopes’ instruments as well as relatedmetadata such as weather images and observing logs, etc.• use of a database schema that enables separate storage of metadata andcatalogues• anXMLdatadictionaryusedtospecifydataorigins, destinations, formats,ranges, etc.• rapidavailabilityofdataduetoelectronictransferofalldataandmetadatafrom the telescopes• an advanced user interface that allows the user to make full use of theseadvanced design elements.Details of many of these items can be found in the companion papers in thisvolume (Damian et al. 2005a,b; Goliath et al. 2005; Melnychuk et al. 2005).This paper’s role is to present a summary of the current scientific capabilities ofthe GSA and discuss some of the developments GSA users can look forward toin future releases.642