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CASU WFCAM/VISTA VDFS Home Page

This is the CASU homepage summarizing the work we do on the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) instrument on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Hawaii. WFCAM is a forerunner for the Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) which has been built at Cerro Paranal Observatory in Chile and will be operational from 2009 onwards. WFCAM, notwithstanding its own highly significant science programme and data handling issues, can be thought of as a trialling system for an integrated VISTA data flow system (VDFS).

The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) are the main users of WFCAM and CASU members are part of the science consortium involved in the planning of this survey. CASU also process all other campaign and PI data taken with WFCAM.

The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is responsible for the design and implementation of the data processing aspects of WFCAM and VISTA observations. Data is pipeline processed at the summits to generate real-time data quality control parameters and then shipped to Cambridge (via Garching in the case of VISTA) for full science data processing.

After processing, the WFCAM and VISTA data are transferred to Edinburgh where the Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) are responsible for the design and implementation of the science archive aspects of the observations.

To help keep tabs on progress we have set up a diary web page outlining recent results and activities. This (arbitrarily) starts from the WFCAM Critical software Design Review held in October 2002. For the most up-to-date information on the pipeline and these projects see our projects pages on the Plone site.

If you wish to contact us concerning CASU software please email casuhelpast.cam.ac.uk.

Dafydd Wyn Evans (dwe @ ast.cam.ac.uk)

Last modified: Wed Oct 14 10:57:50 2009