WFAU Science Archives 2020/23

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.

This grant will support WFAU's continuing curation of data from a number of optical/near-infrared imaging and spectroscopic surveys, namely: UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS); UKIRT Hemisphere Survey (UHS); VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS); VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations Survey (VIDEO); VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV); VISTA Magellanic Survey (VMC); VISTA Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy Survey (VIKING); VST ATLAS; VPHAS+; Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic Survey (GES); VVV eXtended (VVV); Southern H-ATLAS Regions Ks-band Survey (SHARKs); and preparing to curate data for the Multi-Object Optical and Near-IR Spectrograph (MOONS) consortium.

WFAU adds value to these survey datasets by enabling users to query them in conjunction with external catalogues - either local copies stored in Edinburgh or via the Virtual Observatory. In this, we support multi-wavelength astronomy, which is increasingly the most important mode of observational analysis.

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 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. New capabilities will allow users to analyse data without downloading it, by the running of a Jupyter Hub service next to the data within the IRIS (www.iris.ac.uk) cloud.

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.

The proposed programme of research may be expected to have a general impact in two ways:

1. Impact in the form of outreach
Edinburgh has a long-standing and proud record of achievement in this area, thanks to decades of outstanding work by the Royal Observatory Visitor Centre, jointly funded by the University of Edinburgh and STFC. Within the UK university sector, this programme is unusual in its breadth and scope, extending well beyond the normal expectation of public talks, press releases and media interviews. This is in part because IfA staff, post-docs and students have the opportunity to work collaboratively with Visitor Centre Staff, and also in part due to the unique advantages afforded by the ROE site, with its unusual combination of front-line astronomical research, world-leading instrument/technology development, and astronomical history/heritage. Activities include the annual ROE open days, school visits to ROE, weekly public observing, 'Meet The Astronomer' sessions, school visits (with the portable Starlab planetarium), Andy Lawrence's popular e-Astronomer blog, teacher training (including the development of educational resources for both Primary and Secondary teachers), adult 'continuing-education' certificated evening courses, and the development and operation of the Dark Sky Scotland and (most recently) Dark Sky England programmes. ROE is now also the Scottish centre for the European Space Agency led European Space Eduction Resource Office (ESERO), supporting Space Education throughout Scotland.

2. Impact in the form of knowledge exchange
WFAU has been applying the expertise developed from sky survey data management to Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management, through a collaboration with the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Centre and will, during the lifetime of the new grant, further its interaction with the SSA/STM community through the GNOSIS 21st Century Challenge Network+. WFAU is also actively involved in a number of "Big Data" initiatives. The Unit moved into the Higgs Centre for Innovation (HCI) after it opens in 2017. The HCI will provide support for start-up companies in the Big Data and Space sectors, and the intention is that the proximity of WFAU staff will aid interaction with the staff of the start-ups, which can then benefit from WFAU's practical expertise in curating large datasets. WFAU staff are also interacting with The Datalab (www.thedatab.com) a Scottish innovation centre focussed on data science, and are involved in the Edinburgh contribution to the Alan Turing Institute (www.turing.ac.uk).