The Dark Energy Survey: Survey Strategy

Details The Dark Energy Survey: Survey Strategy The Dark Energy Survey: Survey Strategy

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21743316a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #433.16; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

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Scientific paper

The Dark Energy Survey uses 525 nights over 5 years of time on the CTIO Blanco 4m telescope to image 5000 sq-degrees of the South Galactic Cap in 5 filters while also performing a roughly 15 sq-degree time domain survey for supernovae. The survey strategy is designed to optimize three things: our ability to do cluster and LSS science early in the survey, our ability to do weak lensing, and our ability to collect an cosmologically interesting sample of supernovae. Thus we cover the entire survey area twice per year per bandpass (grizY, i > 24); we devote the best seeing time to the main survey; and we observe the SN fields at high cadence over 5-6 months while minimizing observation gaps of a week or more. We have chosen survey metrics which report survey area covered given a fiducial exposure time (the equivalent number of tilings), and an estimate of the total number of galaxies useful for weak lensing that is essentially a non-linear combination of signal to noise and seeing (the effective number of galaxies, n_eff). We have developed photo-z simulations given survey strategy parameters, and these along with the area covered, the depth achieved and n_eff allow us to estimate the figure of merit for our LSS, clusters, and weak lensing projects to judge the the ability of the each scenario to maximize the DETF FOM. We have developed a tool that uses the extensive weather and seeing data available for CTIO to simulate the survey. The poster will describe the current survey strategy and the results that support each choice.

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