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Martin Murphy and Geoff Coxhead implemented a number of important changes
and upgrades to the Observatory's technical equipment during 2004, a few
of which are summarized in their report below.
- The Observatory became an ordinary member of the Northern Ireland
Regional Area Network (NIRAN) consortium in early 2004 and was connected
to the NIRAN at 10 Megabits per second in October 2004. This was a
considerable upgrade from the previous 1Mbps proxy link to JANET via
QUB. The router which connects the Observatory and Planetarium to the
NIRAN is managed remotely by the NIRAN technical team, and as the
Observatory has no control over this it was necessary to implement a
separate firewall between the router and the Observatory network. This was
done in software on a redundant PC system.
- A high-performance computer cluster comprising 15 dual-processor
3.0GHz work nodes and one master node, with a total of 30GB memory,
was purchased with funding from CosmoGrid (part of the Grid Ireland
project; see http://cagraidsvr06.cs.tcd.ie/vos.html). This was installed
during November 2004 in a room in the Observatory bungalow which has been
converted to an air-conditioned computer room. The cluster is being used
to model solar and stellar atmospheres. A Grid gateway system was also
installed which will integrate the Observatory Cluster with Grid Ireland
and will make the other computational clusters of Grid Ireland available
to researchers at the Observatory.
- For some years the Observatory's scientific computer systems have
used the RedHat Linux distribution as their operating system. This
distribution has now become semi-commercial, and so most of the
Observatory's systems have been switched to the alternative Fedora Core
distribution to ensure lower total cost of ownership and access to the
latest free software releases and updates.
- The online database system which has been used for some time to
manage the Library catalogue has been extended to include the inventory of
computer equipment and the colloquia database.
- An up-to-date joint telephone system for the Observatory and
Planetarium was installed and training arranged for all staff. The system
provides all the facilities expected of a modern telephone system
including the ability to use the Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) which
is the first stage towards the total integration of the telephone and
computer networks both internally and externally.
- New external lighting was installed at the front and rear of the
main Observatory building together with pathway lighting to the Robinson
and Calver Domes. Great care was taken to ensure that the lighting
complied with the Observatory's Dark Skies Policy, which parallels that of
the Armagh City and District Council, namely that all external lights,
including floodlights, security and perimeter lights, and lights used to
illuminate paths and walkways, should be fit for purpose and
minimalistic. Such lights should be downward directed and shielded so as
to avoid light pollution and to minimise cost, energy waste and other
adverse environmental consequences. For more information on Light
Pollution, see http://star.arm.ac.uk/darksky/armagh.html.
Next: Technical Research Summaries
Up: Highlights
Previous: Climate
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