Debrief of RCE24 in Paris

on November 14, 2024

Introduction

I was in the Paris’ fair “Les Rencontres du Ciel et de l’Espace” last week-end, and it was great! Below I attach pictures and quick raw videos of it (in french).

This post is a debrief of my participation to the show, and the presentation of Arcsecond.io in front of real people. It was the first time I was doing this after more than 7 years of development (yes, it takes time to set up such a sophisticated and complete platform).

My main objective was to answer this simple question: is Arcsecond relevant to many different people and use cases? And the answer is YES! It is quite a relief, because I spent so much time in the fog.

Three conclusions emerge in my mind, after this fair (ssee below for the details):

Arcsecond has a unique scope and set of ambitions.
Arcsecond helps reducing the software fragmentation in astronomy.
Arcsecond brings modern multi-platform technologies astronomy, to replace ageing existing softwares.

The people

Here are the various people I’ve met, in no particular order:

Very experienced “amateurs”. These were very serious people investing serious money on robust telescopes and infrastructure! Even one of them told me he has 170TB of data, duplicated in his son’s house, and try to use AI to drive his 5-telescopes infrastructure…
Very new amateurs, looking for a first telescope… I was happy to talk with them, but of course it’s a bit early to consider Arcsecond has a useful platform. Nonetheless, that was a very interesting to realise that I am not “easy” enough for very new beginners, and not close enough to the question of telescope/hardware choice…
Intermediate amateurs, who have already either multiple telescopes, or experienced many nights acumulating data, and starting to feel the pain of managing stuff, and look for some solution for their logistic…
Telescope hosting astronomers, engineers & managers. I am a happy to know great people at obstech.cl since a few years already, but there are quite a few others! I was happy to meet someone installing telescopes in Morocco, for instance.
Astrophysicists. What else to say? I was one of them in the past, and I could recognize me in some of them on how they jump from one subject to another. They are often very enthusiastic of technical solutions and rarely aware of the amount of technology and know-how it relies on.
Student engineers, who have a project and are looking for a place to centralize their data and resources. They were very quick at understanding the solution.
People looking for telescope time, thinking I am selling some access to remote telescopes (which I don’t). But very interesting to talk with them too.
The general public, often with this simple question: “What is it, and what do you offer?”

And some people simply saying: “Why didn’t I know you before?”

The question of the features

The pitch of Arcsecond is this: the platform is integrated. Its value also lies in the fact that many disparate things are put together. And yet, it remains modular enough (I hope so). Logically, I spent quite some time explaining Arcsecond’s current and future features, and being challenged by people on them. Here are the main points that clearly stand out in my discussions:

Observatory Portals. Like many other features of Arcsecond, the possibility to welcome multiple people around a set of shared resources within the same workspace has been well understood.
The “Night Explorer” is an excellent tool for decision-making. This sounds quite obvious, but I never articulated it like that before.
Data storage is a key element of the overall workflow of many astronomers. With its linear and unlimited storage in the cloud (with the possibility to soon offer an long-term archival level), Arcsecond has the capability to offer a robust solution. But beyond simple storage, there is the question of organisation, targets follow up, observations follow up, and so on. As such, I have quite a pile of improvements to bring to the existing Data & Targets domains.
Data distribution! This one was not necessarily an obvious one, but I’ve heard at least one person saying that distribution data to colleagues is something that is important, and hard to organise.

And a few notes on missing or to-be-improved features:

Telescope Control. Yes, I am aware of it! Now that Arcsecond has reached a point where it can be called a consistent platform (and not a collection of tools), the telescope control (and domes, cameras, etc) clearly appears as missing. I’ve good news people, the current main developmement line of Arcsecond is precisely this! Numerous people mentionned they were using N.I.N.A., and its great scheduler. Our goal is to offer an alternative to it (even if NINA is free and open source). It makes sense, because we are the only ones having “everything else”.
Target suggestions for the night. This is a very common and useful feature for many astro-photographers. Indeed, Arcsecond is lacking this feature (it’s in the to-do list), even if our Explorer can import any of them (you still need to know whatyou want to observe beforehand). Someone suggested to make a Panini-book type of feature, with catalogues to “complete”. Very interesting suggestion to bring some gamification inside the platform.
Overall, the Target management need to be improved. I’ve talked about it many times, always feeling that I was a bit over-selling something that is too light for now. I’ve plenty of ideas for it.
Arcsecond’s observation planner, with Night Plans, was often demoed in front of users, who simply agreed on the usefulness of it. But it seemed quite natural to link them with automatic scheduling once Telescope Control is being implemented.
A kind of social / follow mechanism, to be informed of some data being made (publicly) available, has been suggested.
Finally, the self-hosted packaging was mentionned, and it appeals to some users. Maily because of the trust they can put on something you install locally. I agree with them. It’s simply a lot of work…

One very important thing has been mentionned and discussed a few times: “What happens to my data, if something happens and prevent you to continue Arcsecond.” This is a very legitimate question! And even if I have a “warranties” page explaining a few things, I plan to go much beyond that simple description on these matters. Especially, I will put online (hopefully, by the end of year) a complete description of what I’ve put in place to answer this concern.

The question of the pricing

Ah the pricing… probably as difficult to implement as all the rest! But such a legitimate and important question. It takes time to achieve the right alignement of value, features and pricing. I think everyone understood the spirit of the current Arcsecond phase: we are very much open to adapt!

But here are the main points that came in my discussions about pricing:

The Astronomers side of the pricing, with two main modules, the storage, and the pay-as-you-go monthly for Nights Central looks good to many different people.
The “Observatories” side is not suited for projects with many telescopes. Indeed, it was designed for multiple people gathering around a few telescopes, like in “regular” observatories, such as in universities. And where the number of people >> the number of telescopes. But there are many projects where there is 1 person = 1 telescope! Hence, I will clearly think of a solution and propose a dedicated pricing to it, which keeps the “Portal” concept, with the management of users.
The “Targets Follow-up” module for Observatory Portals is not perfectly calibrated with expectations of people storing large amount of data (their primary concern). And only then, need to see which target is being observed how many times. I have direct contect with some of these people, and they will help me calibrate the module.

Of course, there is always the question of public research groups, who don’t neceaarily have the funding, or feel the price is too high. I have the same message for them: let’s talk!