Wide Field Astronomy Equipment

天空调查是现代天文学研究的基础，它提供了最有效的方法来获取观测数据样本，这些样本是研究稀有天体和天体群特性所必需的。英国在天文观测方面有着悠久的历史，爱丁堡的宽视场天文单位（WFAU）长期以来一直处于这项活动的前沿，无论是1999年以目前的名义成立以来，还是在其前身——爱丁堡皇家天文台的英国施密特望远镜单位（UKSTU）。WFAU从UKSTU继承了一个基于摄影天空调查的项目。这项工作已经成功完成，WFAU现在的重点是用数字探测器进行天空调查。第一对是使用英国红外望远镜上的WFCAM仪器和VISTA望远镜，都是红外巡天，但是WFAU开始准备的未来巡天将在光学波长上进行。WFAU开发了科学档案系统，可以安全地存储来自天空调查的数据，并通过互联网以灵活的方式向用户提供。WFCAM科学档案现已投入运作，VISTA科学档案已进入最后发展阶段。WFAU在操作这些档案方面面临的主要挑战是现代巡天系统产生的大量数据，以及必须以一种有助于用户科学地利用这些数据的方式向用户提供这些数据。随着数据量的增加，用户不再能够将他们想要分析的所有数据下载到自己的计算机上，因此WFAU工作的一个日益增长的焦点是开发软件来执行数据中心内的一组基本数据分析任务。用户可以直接在WFAU档案中的巡天数据上运行这些程序，然后下载派生的数据产品，这些产品的尺寸将小得多。天空测量仪器正变得能够以越来越快的速度绘制天空，下一代仪器将能够在每晚拍摄大片天空的图像，直到有趣的深度。这意味着他们不仅可以建立天空的深层图像，而且可以通过重复曝光每个区域来做到这一点，这样他们就可以得到一个时间分辨的天空视图。这些所谓的天气巡天代表了巡天天文学的下一个巨大进步，WFAU打算在数据管理的准备工作中发挥主导作用，这样英国天文团体就能很好地利用这些巡天。确保WFAU方案的成功取决于该股内的工作人员是否具备适当的技能。虽然WFAU工作的计算方面在不断增加，但重要的是，从事科学档案项目工作的WFAU工作人员保持与WFAU用户社区有效互动所需的天文学专业知识。为此，WFAU的一些主要工作人员使用我们的数据集进行与项目相关的研究。经验表明，这产生了可以反馈到项目工作方案中的见解和软件，并提供了征聘和留住高质量工作人员的重要机制。

Sky surveys underpin much of modern astronomical research, by providing the most efficient means of deriving samples of observational data required for the study of rare objects and of the properties of populations of sources. The UK has a very strong history in survey astronomy and Edinburgh's Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) has long been at the forefront of this activity, both since its creation in its current guise, in 1999, and in its previous incarnation, as the UK Schmidt Telescope Unit (UKSTU) of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. WFAU inherited from UKSTU a programme based on photographic sky surveys. This has been successfully completed, and WFAU's focus now is on sky surveys undertaken with digital detectors. The first pair of these - using the WFCAM instrument on the UK Infrared Telescope and the VISTA telescope - are both infrared surveys, but the future surveys for which WFAU is starting to prepare will be undertaken at optical wavelengths. WFAU has developed science archive systems which store securely data from sky surveys and make them available to users in a flexible manner via the Internet. The WFCAM Science Archive is now in operation, and the VISTA Science Archive is entering its final stages of development. The main challenges for WFAU in operating these archives are the volumes of data generated by modern sky survey systems, and the necessity of making the data available to users in a way that helps them to exploit those data scientifically. As data volumes increase, users are no longer able to download to their own computers all the data they want to analyse, so an increasing focus of WFAU work is the development of software to perform a set of basic data analysis tasks within the data centre. Users will be able to run these directly on the sky survey data in WFAU's archives, and then download derived data products, which will be much smaller in size. Sky survey instruments are becoming able to map the sky at ever increasing rates, and the next generation of them will be able to image large areas of the sky to interesting depths each night. This means that not only can they build up deep images of the sky, but they can do so through repeated exposures of each area, so that they derive a time-resolved view of the sky. These so-called synoptic sky surveys represent the next great advance in survey astronomy, and WFAU intends to take a leading role in the preparations for the management of their data, so that the UK astronomical community is well placed for the scientific exploitation of those surveys. Ensuring success of the WFAU programme depends on the staff within the Unit having the correct range of skills. While the computational side of WFAU's work is ever increasing, it is important that members of WFAU staff working on science archive project work retain the astronomical expertise required to interact effectively with WFAU's user community. To this end, a few key members of WFAU staff undertake programmes of project-releated research using our datasets. Experience shows that this yields insights and software which can be fed back into the project work programme, and also provides an important mechanism for recruiting and retaining high quality staff.