Introduction
In accordance with the ESO Council document on the VLT/VLTI science operation policies (104 meeting, Dec. 17/18, 2004), the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive Facility (SAF) is the collection point for the survey products and the primary point of publication/availability of these products to the ESO community. ESO assists the survey teams to define and package their data products in a manner consistent with SAF and Virtual Observatory standards and integrates the products into the SAF.
The general policies on the delivery of data products for the ESO public surveys, the products’ types and timelines for delivery are described in this section (§2). The information specifying the format for each data product type is provided in the following section (§3).
The allocation of observing time for the scientific follow up of the surveys will be subject to the timely delivery of the surveys’ products and their compliance to the specifications. The Public Survey Panel will periodically review the progress of the surveys and will assess the compliance to the specification of the surveys’ products.
General policies on the delivery of data products from VISTA public surveys
Survey products will be delivered to the ESO archive in a format specified in the ESO External Data Products standard [PDF], which is accessible from the top-level Phase 3 web page. The following data products form part of the core delivery to the ESO archive:
- astrometrically and photometrically calibrated, co-added, re-gridded tiles, along with their respective confidence maps, in all of the project-relevant filters;
- source catalogues for a tile based on individual, co-added bands, as well as associated source catalogues linking the parameters of individual objects across all of the observed filter bands; the single band catalogs will be ingested and accessible from the ESO web pages as FITS files.
- Survey data products must be supported and characterized by additional information, i.e. meta-data, which provides a full description for their scientific exploitation. For a description and definition of the meta-data we refer to the Phase 3 web pages.
- In the case of VISTA the tile is defined to be the basic building block of the survey, because it allows a better synergy with the VST optical data products which will be present in the ESO archive also. This will also ensure that there is a unique entry in the source catalogue for any objects within the same VISTA pointing. The standard 6-pawprint sequence for a tile covers each sky position twice. Therefore, catalogues from single pawprints from the same tile (or pointing on the sky) will be degenerate and not of optimal depth, since it is exposed for only half of the total exposure time. For programmes which do not observe a full tile in an OB, the partially filled tiles should be the basic building block, although when these partial tiles can be combined to make the full tiles this should be done.
The precise content of the catalogs to be delivered will depend on the scientific goals and exploitation possibilities of each VISTA PS. In coordination with the Public Survey Panel, ESO reserves the right to request from the PIs the expansion of the catalog contents with additional items that could enhance the scientific value of the data products, or their use by the community at large.
The following Section contains the presentation of the timeline and a short description of the Data Products delivered from each of the VISTA public surveys.
Timeline of the Data Products delivery from the ESO public surveys
Raw data from ESO - VISTA public surveys
The raw data will be made public worldwide immediately after passing quality control tests at ESO. Given the practical limitations on the ability of the archive to distribute large volumes of data, will ensure that the risks of other groups being able to scoop the science goals of the survey are very small. To ensure that this is even less likely, ESO may consider imposing further restrictions on the maximum amount of data that can be downloaded by a user not associated with the public surveys.
External Data Products from ESO - VISTA public surveys
In what follows, t0 refers to the date of the official start of science operations for surveys with VISTA. According to the current schedule, it is April 2010.
Following from the agreement signed by the ESO Director General and the PIs of the VISTA public surveys, the delivery of the data products to the ESO archive from an ESO Public Survey is the responsibility of the PI, which certifies the scientific quality and accuracy of the data products. The tables hereafter list a short description of the deliverables and the external data products, their initial deadline for submission and the frequency of the expected new releases.
The description of the product types and their specific format, the Phase 3 concepts and the support documentation for the submission and validation of the external data products for the VISTA public surveys are available on the Phase 3 web pages.