Message from the Director

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Like the rest of the science ecosystem, we at IPAC have been adapting to the challenges of the time, protecting the health and safety of our staff while pursuing our mission of advancing the exploration of the universe. Early in March, IPAC started preparing for remote staff operations, and by mid-March when stay-at-home orders were issued in California, we had already made that transition.

Since moving to fully remote operations, IPAC has continued to release data and maintain on-line services in support of the science community. We carried out the 2020 Data Release for NEOWISE through the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). This release combines data from six years of the NEOWISE Reactivation mission into a single set with millions of images and a database of 114 billion source detections. Data acquisition on orbit and data processing at IPAC for NEOWISE are proceeding.

The NASA Extragalactic Database (NED) and the NASA Exoplanet Science Archive continue normal operations, ingesting, fusing and serving data. The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) has replanned the 2020 Sagan Summer Workshop on Extreme Precision Radial Velocity as a virtual meeting. The SPHEREx team conducted a peer review of the Science Data System and Pipelines leading up to PDR later in the year. Data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Palomar are still being processed and alerts released.

Looking ahead, we will be in the virtual exhibit hall at #AAS236, so please stop by. Later in June, we will organize an online panel discussion of future science opportunities with the Euclid Science Archive. Details will follow in a separate mailing.

Finally, although the Spitzer Space Telescope has acquired its final dataset, processing and closeout operations continue in earnest. We leave you with this recent Spitzer image, and wish you good health and success in your scientific endeavors.

On behalf of everyone at IPAC,

George Helou

IPAC Director

Date: May 15th, 2020

Category: IPAC News

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