Big data new frontiers: Mining, search and management of massive repositories of solar image data and solar events

Abstract

This work presents one of the many emerging research domains where big data analysis has become an immediate need to process the massive amounts of data being generated each day: solar physics. While building a content-based image retrieval system for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory mission, we have discovered research problems that can be addressed by the use of big data processing techniques and in some cases require the development of novel techniques.With over one terabyte of solar data being generated each day, and ever more missions on the horizon that expect to generate petabytes of data each year, solar physics presents many exciting opportunities. This paper presents the current status of our work with solar image data and events, our shift towards using big data methodologies, and future directions for big data processing in solar physics.