Estimating the Computational Requirements for the Large Data Output of the Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope

The prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) is a dual mirror atmospheric gamma-ray telescope with a wide field of view and an increase in resolution/pixel count over current similar telescopes. The pSCT is being tested for possible inclusion in Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Project, which is slated to be the largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory yet, with over a hundred telescopes in both the northern and southern hemisphere. A major hurdle in the development of the pSCT is how to process the large data stream that will be coming out of the telescope, as the number of pixels needed to be processed simultaneously is almost 10x other current telescopes. This data needs to be saved to a Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) file which can be hundreds or thousands of Gigabytes in size. On top of the large data stream, which will need large and powerful computers to process, we are tasked with implementing a quicklook or live-view imaging software. This work concentrates on utilizing the CFITSIO libraries provided by NASA and writing the code that will make this quicklook software be as fast as possible and take the least amount of computer resources possible, as current methods require a lot of processing time to compute the data.