Collaborative Research: The Dark Energy Survey Data Management Operations

暗能量调查（DES）项目是探索宇宙加速的物理起源和暗能量本质的重要一步。它由两部分组成：覆盖5000平方度的深度多波段地图，以及至少每六个晚上重访一次该区域获得的30平方度区域的“宇宙电影”。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，而时域巡天将发现并测量数千颗超新星和其他瞬变现象的光曲线。从2012年9月开始，暗能量相机（DECam）将在每年5个、6个月的观测季节中收集数据。DECam是由DES合作建造的一种新的宽视场设施仪器，将于2011年底安装在智利塞罗托洛洛美洲天文台的布兰科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NSF前期的支持下，该项目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DES实施的一部分完成并运行。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天体物理研究所也将做出重要贡献。该合同支持主要的操作费用，即人员费用，而存储和数据库需要的硬件成本很小。核心处理将主要使用NSF单独支持的网格资源进行。少量的资金也提供了帮助项目协调在费米国家加速器实验室。DES数据将被公开，提供丰富的遗产，使天文学中的许多档案研究项目能够自信地预测远远超出DES的科学目标。这种信心是值得的，因为注意到早期调查的高影响和广泛的社区使用，斯隆数字巡天（SDSS），并意识到DES数据将比SDSS成像更深，具有更高的角度分辨率，扩展到更长的波长。DESDM数据产品将“为科学做好准备”，具有高精度的光度和天体测量校准，并将包括单历元和共同添加的图像以及派生的对象目录，所有这些都来自符合国际虚拟天文台标准的易于访问的数据库。有关时域调查预计将发现的数千个瞬变的信息将立即公开，以便其他研究人员进行后续研究。DES数据的可用性和质量也将影响公众对研究的理解，DESDM团队本身将与当地的一个中学女生项目和阿德勒天文馆等合作，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.