DES first-light countdown, 6 months to go
Blanco telescope, on left, at sunset in Chile. Photo: Brenna Flaugher.
I have promised to provide updates on our progress towards the first light of the Dark Energy Survey’s, or DES. First light is the first official look at the sky after readying the camera and its detection software. If you recall, we were supposed to deliver the Dark Energy Camera, or DECam, imager this summer.
So, without further ado, I am pleased to announce: Here it is!
Shipment arrangements and installation schedule are being worked out as I write. Our team has already set foot in Chile to assemble at the Blanco Telescope the various parts that we tested on our Fermilab telescope simulator in February. Installation will start soon.
I am joining them in November in Chile and can hardly wait. But this is when my wave-like abilities, which I mentioned in a previous post, comes to play. My wave function is now quite stretched as I perform a variety of tasks these days. Read on and see it for yourself.
Blue-tinged Charged Coupler Devices in the Dark Energy Camera imager. Photo: Reidar Hahn
Galaxy clusters are my favorite thing in the universe, and in addition to my work on the DES cluster analysis group I am now building a new catalog based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS, data. Our group at Fermilab is wrapping up all the parallel threads of work on that data set, and that means that I am doing a lot of writing these days, too. Papers are coming out soon and this is terrific news, which puts my mind at ease with respect to that nightmarish pressure for publications.
The reason for my excitement about this is the fact that a reliable, fast and easy-to-use database is the key for success and productivity in our field. I use the SDSS SkyServer for all my SDSS analyses and it is just great to be able to upload a text file with sky coordinates and visualize, with a single click, all the objects you are interested in. Every time I submit a query to the SDSS database, using the CasJobs web interface or my own little scripts, I wonder what the DES equivalents for that will look like. It feels a little like waiting for the next release of your favorite gadget. And as a heavy user and big fan, I, of course, have my own wish list of improvements.
Blanco Telescope April 2011. Photo: Jose Francisco Salgado
My number one wish? Support to upload my own little codes, in addition to data tables, and run them directly on the query outputs. This way I could save only the processed tables, use them later in combination with other data, make all my plots and download only the final results. That would make my work so much easier!
Well, but I’d better stop here and go back to work. George is doing well today, but there is still a long way to go. I will be back with more updates soon. Stay tuned.
–Marcelle Soares-Santos
Tags: Cosmic Frontier, Dark Energy Camera, Dark Energy Survey, DECam, DES
