If you’re lucky, when you look up at the night sky, you’ll see thousands and thousands of points of light. These lights each help tell the story of the universe—how it began, what worlds are out there now, and where new phenomena might develop. Unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos helps scientists better understand the science of our home on Earth, but space also holds something else for the general public—inspiration and wonder at all the possibilities out there.

At the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), important astronomical research is performed by the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys (CAPS). Stephen Pietrowicz, a principal research software engineer at NCSA, is part of the CAPS team, and his recent work has been with the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

The Rubin Observatory project aims to conduct a 10-year optical survey of the visible sky. Such an enormous undertaking requires decades of research and work. This spring, after meticulous planning, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera was installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin. The camera is the world’s largest digital camera, and it’s expected to capture 500 petabytes of image data over the course of the project.

All that data requires an expert to help sort through it. Pietrowicz started working at NCSA in 1995 after seeing a job posting for help with the Center’s storied Mosaic project. He left NCSA for a while, but returned when a new opportunity opened up.

“I left NCSA for a few years and decided to come back in 2005,” said Pietrowicz. “I reached out to some of the people I used to work with and they had an opening on the Rubin project. It was a small team back then. I’ve been working on the project ever since then.”

He’s now part of the middleware team for Vera C. Rubin’s Data Management group. The NCSA team’s work encompasses many different parts of the project’s data management. They’re responsible for gathering data used to construct the images, data movement between sites and orchestration of image processing campaigns.

Pietrowicz manages several different tasks, including the Observatory Operations Data Service, or OODS. “I wrote the OODS, which handles images sent by the Simonyi Survey Telescope. My software quickly ingests those images at the summit in Chile, so they can immediately be used by scientists. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will provide data that will impact the astronomy community for years to come.”

Pietrowicz’s work also makes it possible for sites around the world to use the data brought in from the Rubin Observatory. “I wrote some services which are used as part of the data processing campaign which runs in France, the United Kingdom and at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. That software registers data used in the campaign, and also ingests incoming data so it is available for use at each of the sites.”

Everything Pietrowicz and the Data Management team create is open source. While some of the work is explicitly tailored for the Rubin project, some of it may prove useful for other projects of a similar nature. Beyond creating useful tools for data collection, the Rubin project will have a large and lasting impact for researchers and the public alike.

“The astronomy community will have more data than ever to work with,” said Pietrowicz, “which will lead to new discoveries. The general public will be able to see bigger images than have ever been available before, and this work will be inspirational to students who might be considering what they’d like to study.”

As the team moves to the next phase of the project, Pietrowicz is excited to start transitioning to a new role. “There is still a lot of work to do. We’re winding down the Construction portion of the project, and we’re transitioning to Operations later this year. I’ll be part of Operations for the foreseeable future.”

With all that new data, CAPS will be busy working on new research projects for years to come, and Pietrowicz looks forward to continuing to support CAPS as they work among the stars.