The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is building the digital pipelines that will turn a firehose of raw telescope data into usable science for the entire UK astronomy community. Modern survey cameras produce data volumes far beyond what individual astronomers can handle. Without systematic processing, calibration, and long-term storage, the terabytes streaming in from instruments like VISTA and WFCAM would be useless. CASU’s pipelines—already developed for the Vista Data Flow System—solve this by automatically cleaning, calibrating, and cataloguing images so researchers can actually analyse them. The problem is not a lack of data; it is a lack of tools to make sense of it. This grant funds continued operation of those pipelines for the 2012–2015 period, plus development of new ones for spectroscopic surveys like Gaia-ESO, WEAVE, and 4MOST. If successful, the work will keep UK astronomers at the forefront of wide-field surveys in the near-infrared and optical. The infrastructure and skills built here will also be directly relevant to future facilities such as Extremely Large Telescopes and the Square Kilometre Array, which will generate even larger data streams. This is fundamental infrastructure for astronomy—it does not produce discoveries itself, but without it, discoveries cannot happen.
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Observational astronomy in the UK is in a strong position with the advent of the pioneering near-infrared (NIR) survey facilities of VISTA and WFCAM and the opportunities for detailed followup provided by membership of ESO. Significant advances in astronomy have always relied heavily on surveys of the sky from radio, through optical to X-ray wavelengths and the new era of deep NIR surveys is the latest stage in this progression. It is also one where the UK has both a substantial lead and the requisite expertise in the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) to exploit this advance in wide field astronomy through delivery of expertly processed and calibrated science data products. Recognising the benefits of this, ESO are now also heavily committed to public imaging surveys through the VST and VISTA telescopes and large scale public spectroscopic surveys, such as Gaia-ESO, with 300 allocated nights on the VLT over the next 5 years. Members of CASU have played a leading role in survey astronomy, not only by pioneering techniques to optimally extract knowledge from survey data, but also by taking a proactive role in exploiting this information to produce world-leading research. This synergy and feedback between data processing and exploitation has been crucial. In the modern era wide-field digital survey cameras produce enormous volumes of data that are way beyond the resource capacity and analysis skills of non-specialist astronomers. Systematic pipeline processing, calibration and legacy curation of observational data are a fundamental requirement of an end-to-end integrated observing strategy and a crucial component of a global Virtual Observatory. The Vista Data Flow System (VDFS) was developed to allow an optimal ergonomic solution to this avalanche of data, through access to multi-Tbyte data storage systems, expert pipeline processing systems and science user support. Continuing development of the CASU processing and analysis pipelines will not only benefit the UK astronomy community now, but will also be relevant in the era of Extremely Large Telescopes and the radio Square Kilometer Array, by developing the infrastructure and skills to analyse the data from these facilities. This standard grant proposal builds on the tremendous advances already made and requests funding for CASU for the period 2012-2015 for the following activities: continued operation and maintenance of the WFCAM data processing and calibration pipeline; advanced development, enhancement, and operation of the UK VISTA pipelines; maintenance and upgrades for the VDFS ESO pipeline deliverables; operational support and pipeline processing for the UK-led VST public surveys in the southern hemisphere and the equivalent precursor surveys in the northern hemisphere; and support for the design, development and operation of spectroscopic processing pipelines for the Gaia ESO public survey and future proposed spectroscopic survey instruments such as WEAVE and 4MOST
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