DECam Exposure Section processed by DESDM

DECam

Blanco 4m

 

 

The Dark Energy Survey

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a 5000 square degree grizY survey of the Southern sky aimed to understanding the accelerating expansion rate of the universe using four complementary methods: weak gravitational lensing, galaxy cluster counts, baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia supernovae. DES uses the new 3 square degree Dark Energy Camera (DECam) imager, a 570 Megapixel CCD camera installed at the prime focus of on the Blanco 4m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in northern Chile. For about 100 nights per year, during the next five years, DES will scan the sky to perform a 5000 sq-degree wide field survey and 30 sq-degree supernova survey. Learn more on the main DES website.

Dark Energy Survey Data Managment (DESDM) at NCSA

The Dark Energy Survey Data Management (DESDM) Project has developed and operates the DESDM system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  This system is used for the processing and calibration of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) data, and the DECam Community Pipeline, used by NOAO to process DECam data obtained by non-DES observers. Our mission is to process the raw data generated by the DECAM instrument at the CTIO observatory into science-ready data products. Initially, DESDM will serve these products to the collaboration, and then, after a proprietary period, to the public.

The Dark Energy Survey will make its data public in two ways. Survey Operations began on August 31, 2013. Reduced DECAM images will be available from NCSA a year after they are taken, starting in August, 2014. DESDM will also host two public data releases, one about midway through the survey, and a final release. These will include catalog data of greater scope than the catalogs produces by the Community Pipeline run by NOAO.

The Core DESDM Team at NCSA

  • Donald Petravick, Senior Project Manager and Principal Investigatoremail
  • Matias Carrasco Kind, Research Scientist. email
  • Ricardo Covarrubias, Research Associate. email www
  • Gregory Daues, Research Programmer. email
  • Margaret Gelman, Research Scientist. email
  • Michelle Gower, Research Programmer. email
  • Robert Gruendl, Research Scientist and Associate Research Professor of Astronomy. email
  • Michael Johnson, Research Scientist. email
  • Felipe Menanteau, Research Scientist and Associate Research Professor of Astronomy. email www
  • Todd Tomashek, Senior Scientific Database Administrator. email

 

 

Links

For Collaborators (gray links require login)

Announcements

  • 10/22/2014 - DESDM Software available via EUPS
  • 10/17/2014 - Y1A1 pre-release completed. Documentation available here
  • 1/1/2014 - DES@NCSA has open positions! See the AAS Jobregister and U of Iliinois ads. (Closed)
  • SVA1 released. Release documentation available here.
  • 6/27/2013 -  DESDM software available via eups
  • 5/20/2013 - Y1C2 pre-release completed. Documentation available here.
  • 4/04/2013 - Y1C1 pre-release completed. Documentation available here.
  • 2/08/2013 - Ask some questions to help build up our Data Access FAQ

 

 

 

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (1138766).