VISTA Data Flow System

This site provides access to all the documents generated by CASU for the UK review being held on the 24th & 25th October 2006 at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.

Documentation for the Science Archive design by the WFAU group is available at http://www.roe.ac.uk/~nch/wfcam.

Specific documents

• UK pipeline general design overview document   VIS-SPE-IOA-20000-0017
  provides an overview of various aspects of the UK pipeline and discusses the UK user requirements document , an updated version in response to the UK review recommendations is now available here.

• the Data Reduction Library Design Document   VIS-SPE-IOA-20000-0010
  provides a detailed description of the algorithms used and details of the modules and their interfaces as delivered to ESO. These provide the pawprint processing�part of the UK pipeline. For the most recent version click here.

• the VIRCAM Calibration Plan   VIS-SPE-IOA-20000-0002
  This is an ESO deliverable describing the calibration procedures for VIRCAM, which are the same whichever reduction software is subsequently employed.

• a technical review of WFCAM processing   Pipeline processing of wide-field near-infrared data from WFCAM
  this is a draft of a MNRAS paper mainly describing the algorithmic and technical aspects of the WFCAM pipeline. Virtually all of this methodology is applicable to the VIRCAM pipeline.

• photometric calibration of WFCAM data   VDF-TRE-IOA-00011-00001
  this explains the procedures developed to calibrate WFCAM data. VISTA photometric calibration is expected to be similar.
  1. see also Hewett et al. 2006 MNRAS (in press) The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey ZYJHK Photometric System: Passbands and Synthetic Colours

• web-based pipeline and survey progress monitoring   VDF-TRE-IOA-00012-0002
  description and reference to the web pages showing the status of pipeline processing and survey progress for WFCAM

Other relevant papers

• further background papers:
  1. Irwin 1985 MNRAS 214 575 Automatic Analysis of Crowded Fields
  2. Irwin 1996 7th Canary Islands Winter School Image processing, image detection and parameterisation (subset of lectures)
  3. Irwin et al. 2004 SPIE 5493 412 VISTA data flow system: pipeline processing for WFCAM and VISTA
  4. Dye et al. 2006 MNRAS (in press) The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey Early Data Release
  5. Casali et al. 2006 A&A (in press version) The UKIRT Wide-field camera. Now published: A&A 2007, 467, 777.
  6. Irwin et al. 2006 MNRAS (in press version) The MONITOR project: data processing and light-curve production
     a description of application of CASU list-driven photometry techniques to generate milli-mag precision lightcurves.
• detailed description of contents of WFCAM catalogue product files:
  http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/catalogues.pdf
  further VIRCAM-specific details can be found in the WFAU-CASU ICD

• examples of field distortion and its effect on astrometry, offsetting and photometry:
  http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/astrom/

• details of persistence investigations:
  http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/persistence

• details about the development work on psf photometry
  1. http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/psf3
  2. http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/psf2
  3. http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/psf

• overview of various analyses of commissioning and science verification data
  1. http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/sv
  2. http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/vdfs/docs/reports/commissioning

• ESO estimate of CPU required to run VDFS QC pipeline in near-time   vircam_cpu_estimate.pdf

• VIRCAM data reduction pipeline manual

• http://casu.ast.cam.ac.uk/ entry point to CASU Plone web site