Headquarters and Science Data Management Center Sites Selected for World’s Largest Gamma-Ray Detector

On 13 June 2016, the governing body of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory gGmbH (CTAO gGmbH), the CTA Council, selected Bologna as the host site of the CTA Headquarters and Berlin-Zeuthen for the Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) from five site candidates.

The Council, composed of shareholders from nine countries (Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) in consultation with associate members (Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden), made the decision after careful consideration of the proposals against criteria that included infrastructure, services and access requirements.

“We are grateful for all of the proposals put forward by the applicants. While all of the candidate sites were suitable options, the Council is confident that Bologna and Zeuthen will be well-equipped to support CTA’s long-term operations,” said Ulrich Straumann, Managing Director of the CTAO gGmbH.

The CTA Headquarters will be the central office responsible for the overall administration of Observatory operations. Approximately two dozen personnel will provide technical coordination and support, and the main administrative services for the governing bodies and users of the Observatory. The headquarters will be located within the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) premises in a new building shared with the Bologna University Department of Physics and Astronomy. This location gives CTA a home in a word-class scientific environment with state-of-the-art facilities, in one of Italy’s most attractive and historic cultural centres.

The Science Data Management Centre will coordinate science operations and make CTA’s science products available to the worldwide community. An estimated 20 personnel will manage CTA’s science coordination including software maintenance and data processing for the Observatory, which is expected to generate approximately 100 petabytes (PB) of data by the year 2030. (One PB is equal to 1015 bytes of data or one million gigabytes.) The SDMC will be located in a new building complex on the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) campus in Zeuthen, which is conveniently located just outside Berlin – one of Europe’s primary capital cities. This location provides extensive access to well-established infrastructure services and a powerful computing centre.