Wide-Field Astronomy at Edinburgh 2014-2015

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.

The two main survey systems whose data WFAU curates - the WFCAM instrument on the UK Infrared Telescope and the VISTA telescope - both work in the near-infrared, but WFAU has recently started to ingest data from two telescopes that operate in the optical region of the spectrum, namely spectroscopic data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and photometric data from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST).

In total, this will mean that WFAU will be curating, on behalf of the UK astronomical community, data from nine sky 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); UltraVISTA; VISTA Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy Survey (VIKING); VST ATLAS; and Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic Survey (GES).

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.

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 with a local SME
WFAU has a long-standing relationship with a local SME that supplies much of its computing hardware. WFAU has long been one of this company's most challenging customers, in the sense that its requirements - particularly in terms of the scale and performance of storage hardware - are very demanding and the company has developed expertise in cutting-edge technologies through seeing them being deployed by WFAU. In particular, the company has lent WFAU new hardware and then benefited from the lessons leaned by WFAU staff putting it through its paces in real usage modes.