Wide Field Astronomy

天文观测为许多现代天文研究提供了最有效的手段，提供了研究稀有天体和源群体性质所需的观测数据样本。英国在测量天文学方面有着非常悠久的历史，爱丁堡的广域天文学单元(WFAU)自1999年以目前的名义创建以来，以及其前身--爱丁堡皇家天文台的英国施密特望远镜单元(UKSTU)--长期以来一直处于这一活动的前沿。WFAU继承了英国科技大学的一个基于摄影天空测量的计划。这项工作已经成功完成，WFAU现在的重点是使用数字探测器进行天空测量。使用英国红外望远镜和Vista望远镜上的WFCAM仪器的第一对都是红外测量，但WFAU正在开始准备的未来测量将在光学波长上进行。世界气象组织开发了科学档案系统，安全地存储来自天空测量的数据，并通过互联网以灵活的方式向用户提供这些数据。WFCAM科学档案馆现在正在运行，Vista科学档案馆正在进入最后的开发阶段。WFAU在操作这些档案时面临的主要挑战是现代天文测量系统产生的数据量，以及向用户提供数据的必要性，以帮助他们科学地利用这些数据。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工作的一个越来越大的重点是开发软件，以便在数据中心内执行一系列基本数据分析任务。用户将能够直接在WFAU档案中的天空测量数据上运行这些数据，然后下载体积小得多的派生数据产品。天空测量仪器正在变得能够以越来越快的速度绘制天空地图，下一代仪器将能够在每晚将大片天空的图像绘制到有趣的深度。这意味着他们不仅可以建立天空的深层图像，而且可以通过对每个区域的重复曝光来做到这一点，这样他们就可以获得时间分辨率的天空视图。这些所谓的天文观测代表着观测天文学的下一个重大进展，世界天文学联合会打算在管理其数据的准备工作中发挥主导作用，以便英国天文学界为科学利用这些观测做好准备。确保该股方案的成功取决于该股内的工作人员具备各种正确的技能。虽然WFAU的计算方面的工作在不断增加，但重要的是，从事科学档案项目工作的WFAU工作人员必须保留与WFAU用户社区有效互动所需的天文专业知识。为此，WFAU工作人员的几名关键成员利用我们的数据集开展了与项目相关的研究方案。经验表明，这产生了可反馈到项目工作方案中的见解和软件，也为招聘和留住高素质工作人员提供了一个重要机制。

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.