Collaborative Research: The Dark Energy Survey Data Management Operations

AST-1138766/1138729/1138737 Petravick/Jarvis/Frieman暗能量调查（DES）项目是探索宇宙加速的物理起源和暗能量性质的重要一步。 它由两部分组成：一张覆盖5000平方度的深层多波段地图，以及一张30平方度区域的“宇宙电影”，这是通过至少每六个晚上重访一次该区域而获得的。 广域巡天将测量大约3亿个星系的位置、形状、通量和近似（光度）红移，时域巡天将发现和测量数千颗超新星和其他瞬变的光变曲线。 从2012年9月开始，将在五个年度为期六个月的观测季节收集数据，使用暗能量相机（DECam），一种新的宽视场，由DES合作建造的设施仪器，将于2011年底安装在Cerro Tololo Inter的布兰科4米望远镜的主要焦点上，原始调查数据必须有效地处理成科学上有用的产品，为DES合作提供服务，以实现科学目标。 在先前NSF的支持下，该项目已经构建了暗能量调查数据管理（DESDM）系统，以满足DES科学要求。 该系统将作为执行DES的一部分完成和运行。 这项工作将主要在伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校的国家超级计算应用中心完成，宾夕法尼亚大学和巴黎的天体物理研究所也做出了重要贡献。 该合同支持主要的运营费用，即人员费用，而存储和数据库需求的硬件成本很低。 核心处理将主要使用NSF单独支持的网格资源进行。 此外，费米国家加速器实验室还将提供少量资金用于项目协调。DES数据将被公开，提供丰富的遗产，使天文学领域的许多存档研究项目能够有信心地预测，这些项目将远远超出DES的科学目标。 这种信心是值得注意的高影响力和广泛的社区使用的早期调查，斯隆数字巡天（SDSS），并认识到DES数据将大大更深，具有更高的角分辨率，并扩展到更长的波长比SDSS成像。 DESDM的数据产品将是“科学就绪”的，具有高精度的测光和天体测量校准，并将包括单历元和共同添加的图像和派生的天体目录，所有这些都来自一个符合国际虚拟天文台标准的易于访问的数据库。以便其他研究人员跟进。 DES数据的可用性和质量也将影响公众对研究的理解，DESDM团队本身将与一个针对中学女生的当地方案和阿德勒天文馆合作，以追求这些教育和推广的可能性。

AST-1138766/1138729/1138737Petravick/Jarvis/FriemanThe Dark Energy Survey (DES) project is a major step forward in probing the physical origin of cosmic acceleration and the nature of dark energy. It consists of two pieces: a deep, multi-band map covering 5000 square degrees, and a "cosmic movie" of a thirty square-degree region obtained by revisiting that area at least once every six nights. The wide-area survey will measure positions, shapes, fluxes, and approximate (photometric) redshifts for around 300 million galaxies, and the time-domain survey will discover and measure light curves for several thousand supernovae and other transients. Data will be collected during five annual, six-month observing seasons, beginning in September 2012, with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a new wide-field, facility instrument built by the DES collaboration that will be installed in late 2011 at the prime focus of the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.The raw survey data must be processed efficiently into scientifically useful products that are served to the DES collaboration to enable the science goals. With previous NSF support, the project has constructed the Dark Energy Survey Data Management (DESDM) system so as to meet the DES Science Requirements. This system will be finished and operated as part of carrying out the DES. The work will be done mainly at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with important contributions from the University of Pennsylvania and from the Institut d'Astrophysique in Paris. This award supports the major operational expense, that of the personnel, with small hardware costs for storage and database needs. The core processing will be mainly carried out using Grid resources supported separately by NSF. A small amount of funding is also provided to help with project coordination at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.DES data will be made public, providing a rich legacy that will enable numerous archival research projects in astronomy that can confidently be predicted to go far beyond the scientific goals of the DES. Such confidence is merited by noting the high impact and broad community use of an earlier survey, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and realizing that the DES data will be substantially deeper, have higher angular resolution, and extend to longer wavelengths than the SDSS imaging. The DESDM data products will be "science-ready," with high-precision photometric and astrometric calibrations, and will include single-epoch and co-added images and derived object catalogs, all served from an easily accessible database compliant with international virtual observatory standards.Information about the many thousands of transients expected to be found by the time-domain survey will be made public immediately, to enable follow-up by other researchers. The availability and quality of the DES data will also impact the public understanding of research, and the DESDM team itself will be working with a local program for middle-school girls and with the Adler Planetarium, among others, to pursue these education and outreach possibilities.