The Dark Energy Survey Data Management System

TL;DR

The paper describes the design and development of the Dark Energy Survey Data Management System, which processes, calibrates, and archives large volumes of astronomical data to study cosmic acceleration.

Contribution

It introduces the system's architecture, the integration of scientific codes, and the Data Challenge process for improving data management and analysis.

Findings

System handles about 1 TB of data per night

Data Challenge improves algorithms and analysis codes

Supports processing of 300 million galaxy observations

Abstract

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a project with the goal of building, installing and exploiting a new 74 CCD-camera at the Blanco telescope, in order to study the nature of cosmic acceleration. It will cover 5000 square degrees of the southern hemisphere sky and will record the positions and shapes of 300 million galaxies up to redshift 1.4. The survey will be completed using 525 nights during a 5-year period starting in 2012. About O(1 TB) of raw data will be produced every night, including science and calibration images. The DES data management system has been designed for the processing, calibration and archiving of these data. It is being developed by collaborating DES institutions, led by NCSA. In this contribution, we describe the basic functions of the system, what kind of scientific codes are involved and how the Data Challenge process works, to improve simultaneously the Data Management system algorithms and the Science Working Group analysis codes.