Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Group members Mike Irwin Floor van Leeuwen Bob Argyle Sue Cowell Francesca De Angeli Dafydd Wyn Evans Eduardo Gonzalez-Solares Simon Hodgkin Jim Lewis Marco Riello Guy Rixon Nic Walton

The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is part of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University and is mainly involved in survey astronomy. Expertise within the group covers a broad range of ground-based and space-based projects ranging from data processing and image analysis techniques through to data curation and access to UK facility data archives. Modern era wide-field digital surveys produce vast amounts of data and CASU is at the forefront of automatically processing and archiving these legacy products. Research interests of individual CASU members include: statistical analysis techniques for data mining; searches for rare objects in large area surveys; properties of nearby galaxies and star clusters; attitude control and exploitation of astrometric space missions.

CASU Activities
CASU Astronomical Data Centre	Archives of astronomical data
CASU data processing	The CASU data processing facility
VDFS	Operation and development of the VISTA and WFCAM dataflow pipelines
Future Space Missions: GAIA and Planck	Projected future space missions for mapping the Nearby Universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background
INT Wide Field Survey	A deep wide-angle multipassband CCD survey on the Isaac Newton Telescope
Hipparcos	The Hipparcos data archive and mission overview
Carlsberg Meridian Telescope	A fully automated astrometric sky survey telescope with a drift scan CCD
APM Facility (RIP)	Description of the APM microdensitometer and online sky catalogues
PDS Facility (RIP)	A commercial microdensitometer with high dynamic range and projection optics