Sky Surveys

Abstract

Sky surveys represent a fundamental data basis for astronomy. We use them to map in a systematic way the universe and its constituents, and to discover new types of objects or phenomena. We review the subject, with an emphasis on the wide-field imaging surveys, placing them in a broader scientific and historical context. Surveys are the largest data generators in astronomy, propelled by the advances in information and computation technology, and have transformed the ways in which astronomy is done. We describe the variety and the general properties of surveys, the ways in which they may be quantified and compared, and offer some figures of merit that can be used to compare their scientific discovery potential. Surveys enable a very wide range of science; that is perhaps their key unifying characteristic. As new domains of the observable parameter space open up thanks to the advances in technology, surveys are often the initial step in their exploration. Science can be done with the survey data alone or a combination of different surveys, or with a targeted follow-up of potentially interesting selected sources. Surveys can be used to generate large, statistical samples of objects that can be studied as populations, or as tracers of larger structures. They can be also used to discover or generate samples of rare or unusual objects, and may lead to discoveries of some previously unknown types. We discuss a general framework of parameter spaces that can be used for an assessment and comparison of different surveys, and the strategies for their scientific exploration. As we move into the Petascale regime, an effective processing and scientific exploitation of such large data sets and data streams poses many challenges, some of which may be addressed in the framework of Virtual Observatory and Astroinformatics, with a broader application of data mining and knowledge discovery technologies.

An invited chapter, to appear in Astronomical Techniques, Software, and Data (ed. H. Bond), Vol.2 of Planets, Stars, and Stellar Systems (ser. ed. T. Oswalt), Springer Verlag, in press (2012). 62 pages, incl. 2 tables and 3 figures

References in corpus (66)

• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Discovery of a Supernova Explosion at Half the Age of the Universe and its Cosmological Implications
• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS)
• The Supernova Legacy Survey: Measurement of Omega_M, Omega_Lambda and w from the First Year Data Set
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Spectra and redshifts
• The USNO-B Catalog
• The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) -- Overview
• Measurements of the Cosmological Parameters Omega and Lambda from the First 7 Supernovae at z >= 0.35
• Fermi Large Area Telescope First Source Catalog
• First Results from the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey
• zCOSMOS: A Large VLT/VIMOS redshift survey covering 0 < z < 3 in the COSMOS field
• The MACHO Project: Microlensing Results from 5.7 Years of LMC Observations
• LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
• The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• Possible Gravitational Microlensing of a Star in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• SWIRE: The SIRTF Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic Survey
• The 2dF QSO Redshift Survey - XII. The spectroscopic catalogue and luminosity function
• The Las Campanas Redshift Survey
• The PSCz Catalogue
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Bright Gamma-ray Source List
• First Results from the X-ray and Optical Survey of the Chandra Deep Field South
• The Updated Zwicky Catalog (UZC)
• Deep Extragalactic X-ray Surveys
• The Astrophysics of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays
• The UKIRT Wide Field Camera ZYJHK Photometric System: Calibration from 2MASS
• The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey - First epoch VVDS-Deep survey: 11564 spectra with 17.5<=IAB<=24, and the redshift distribution over 0< z <=5
• OGLE 2003-BLG-235/MOA 2003-BLG-53: A planetary microlensing event
• Data Mining and Machine Learning in Astronomy
• The IRAS 1.2 Jy Survey: Redshift Data
• On Machine-Learned Classification of Variable Stars with Sparse and Noisy Time-Series Data
• The Multiscale Morphology Filter: Identifying and Extracting Spatial Patterns in the Galaxy Distribution
• The ROTSE-III Robotic Telescope System
• IceCube: An Instrument for Neutrino Astronomy
• Nearby Supernova Rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. I. The Methods and Database
• The Subaru Deep Field: The Optical Imaging Data
• An Early Warning System for Asteroid Impact
• The Hubble Deep Fields
• First results from the 2dF galaxy redshift survey
• Robust Machine Learning Applied to Astronomical Datasets I: Star-Galaxy Classification of the SDSS DR3 Using Decision Trees
• The Deep Lens Survey Transient Search I : Short Timescale and Astrometric Variability
• A VLA search for 5 GHz radio transients and variables at low Galactic latitudes
• The Orthogonal Transfer CCD
• Monitoring All Sky for Variability
• The Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey - A 690-Square-Degree, 12-Epoch Radio Dataset - I: Catalog and Long-Duration Transient Statistics
• A Search for Untriggered GRB Afterglows with ROTSE-III
• The QUEST Large Area CCD Camera
• Measuring our universe from galaxy redshift surveys
• The SDSS-UKIDSS Fundamental Plane of Early-type Galaxies
• The Northern Sky Optical Cluster Survey III: A Cluster Catalog Covering Pi Steradians
• The Palomar-Quest Digital Synoptic Sky Survey
• The Allen Telescope Array Fly's Eye Survey for Fast Radio Transients
• The Dark Side of ROTSE-III Prompt GRB Observations
• The DEEP Groth Strip Survey. I. The Sample
• Automated Probabilistic Classification of Transients and Variables
• The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey I. Survey Description and Static Catalog Results for the Bootes Field
• The Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey -- A 700-Square-Degree, Multi-Epoch Radio Dataset -- II: Individual Epoch Transient Statistics
• Mapping the Universe: The 2010 Russell Lecture
• The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey II. Daily and Monthly Monitoring for Transients and Variability in the Bootes Field
• Variable Point Sources in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82. I. Project Description and Initial Catalog (0 h < R.A. < 4 h)
• Towards Real-time Classification of Astronomical Transients
• Exploration of Parameter Spaces in a Virtual Observatory
• Some Pattern Recognition Challenges in Data-Intensive Astronomy
• The QUEST Data Processing Software Pipeline
• Data-Mining a Large Digital Sky Survey: From the Challenges to the Scientific Results
• Observations from Australasia using the Gravitational Microlensing Technique
• Exploring the Variable Sky with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Cited by in corpus (15)

• LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
• Overview of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
• Immersive and Collaborative Data Visualization Using Virtual Reality Platforms
• Gravitational Lenses as High-Resolution Telescopes
• Real-Time Data Mining of Massive Data Streams from Synoptic Sky Surveys
• A catalog of broad morphology of Pan-STARRS galaxies based on deep learning
• Automatic detection of peculiar galaxy pairs in Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Probing delayed-end reionization histories with the 21cm-LAE cross-power spectrum
• BANYAN. X. Discovery of a wide, low-gravity L-type companion to a fast-rotating M3 dwarf
• New magnetic chemically peculiar stars and candidates in the ATLAS First Catalog of Variable Stars
• Deep Co-Added Sky from Catalina Sky Survey Images
• Processing GOTO data with the Rubin Observatory LSST Science Pipelines I : Production of coadded frames
• Automated Real-Time Classification and Decision Making in Massive Data Streams from Synoptic Sky Surveys
• An Information Theory Approach on Deciding Spectroscopic Follow Ups
• Relating Peak Optical Luminosity and Orbital Period of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in X-ray Binaries