Great Surveys: Spectral and Temporal Frontiers

1
Great Surveys Spectral and Temporal Frontiers

• Adam Aaardvark-Zulkarni, Department
  of Astronomy
• or
• Adam Zulkarni-Aardvark, Department of Physics,
  
  California Institute of Technology

2
Some Well known Adages

• Science progresses through funerals (Max Planck?)
• Given a telescope/instrument with entirely new
  capabilities even a sufficiently idiotic
  astronomer can make a sufficiently great
  discovery (Kulkarni)
• Those who can think creatively do. Those who have
  have gone past that point (or never had it) do
  surveys (name with held by request)

3
In the previous century astronomers undertook
surveys to
4
Motivations

• Catalog of the Sky
• Palomar Sky Survey
• Search for variables
• Harvard Sky Patrol
• Explore the Sky (New Bands)
• Early Cambridge Surveys
• UHURU (classical X-rays)
• IRAS (long wavelength IR)
• ROSAT All Sky Survey (soft X-rays)

5
Issues

• Storage Physical Medium
• Glass plates (Palomar Sky Survey)
• Journals (Hat Creek HI surveys)
• Access
• Basic access (e.g. NVSS)
• Reduced data (e.g. IRAS, ROSAT)

6
This Century
7
Digital Surveys

• 2MASS
• Defined the gold standard for imaging surveys
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Defined the gold standard for a complex
  survey/experiment
• Parkes Multibeam Survey
• Found more pulsars than the entire world output
  since t0

8
Experiments Quests

• CMB astronomy brought rigorous experimental
  planning to astronomy
• Large number of experiments are now geared up to
  attack
• Cosmography (Ia SN, WL, BAO)
• Cosmology (EOR)
• Large scale structure (Clusters, WL)
• Quests Extra-solar planets
• Transit experiments, COROT, Kepler

9
Drivers

• Technology
• Semi-conductor industry (Moores law)
• Optical Astronomy
• Radio Astronomy
• Detectors (e.g. IR, sub-mm)
• Build the next instrument
• To Acceptable Cost
• To Aspiration

10
The World has become Upside Down

• Capital cost Software
• Running costs hardware
• Data inexpensive
• Analysis very expensive

11
Issues
12
Full Sky Surveys

• This decade will see full sky surveys from radio
  through GeV
• Basic Issue
• Basic Access
• Cross-catalog Access
• Sophisticated Queries
• Falls squarely in the VO framework

13
Exponential GrowthSynergyAccelerating Returns

• Moores law performance is exponential
• Kurzweil claimed that the performance of
  electronics (over 100 years) was accelerating
  (decreasing e-fold timescale)
• Broadly speaking what happens when two
  exponentially technologies are applied to the
  same problem ?
• Law of accelerating returns

14
Exciting Possibilities

• New avenues for discovery (data mining)
• Possibilities for discoveries that lie at the
  interface of previously poorly connected subjects
  (e.g. LIGO and EM astronomy, UHECR and regular
  astronomy)
• Holistic approach
• Complete SEDs
• High quality statistics
• deeper insight including numerical astrophysics
• Rare Objects

15
Are we ready?

• Poor tools
• No efficient tools to intelligently analyze
  multiple data bases
• Community not well trained
• Poor incentive for developing tools
• Deep concerns about career paths for software
  astronomers

16
Followup Shortage

• Followup is the key for surveys (as opposed to
  self-contained experiments)
• Spectroscopy is usually critical
• Transient objects need light curves
• Radio a major bottleneck (cf GRB astronomy)

17
Aspirations Appetite
18
Projects Soon and Proposed

• Optical Imagers Raptor, PanStarr, Palomar
  Transient Factory, SkyMapper, VST, One degree
  Imager,HyperSuprimeCam, Dark Energy Camera, PS4,
  LSST, JDEM
• IR Imagers UKIRT, VISTA, Subaru
• Spectroscopic Surveys SDSS, LAMOST, WFMOS
• Radio ATA, EVLA, LOFAR, EOR1, EOR2, , LWA,
  ASKAP
• Sub-millimeter Scuba-2, SPT, WISE, LMT, CCAT

19
Reality Check

• Aspirations far exceed fiscal reality
• Astronomers must identify cost-savings
• Data reduction pipelines
• Standard Archiving
• Eliminate multiple surveys for similar objectives

20
Transient Object Astronomy
21
Why is this field interesting?

• Transients have traditionally played a major role
  in the history of astronomy
• Algol, Cepheids, Supernovae
• Explosion in GRB astronomy is a direct
  demonstration of accelerating returns
• Phase space for discovery is extremely large
  (rare objects, fast events)

22
Transients experimental planning is necessary

• All surveys claim to provide value to other areas
  of astronomy
• Mostly the claims are dubious
• Will likely fail for transient object astronomy
• Community focus has been on discovering events
  (cf LSST, PanStarrs).
• BUT
• Payoff is really in filtering and followup
• Long term value is in rates and statistics
• Needs experiment planning

23
This Meeting
24
Critical Issues

• Sociology
• Reward Structure
• Software
• Structure of Surveys
• How do we make progress?

25
Balance between Surveys and PI science

• Big difference between astronomy and physics
• Cf Fermi-Dirac
• Astronomy is the art of what is possible
• We should sharply distinguish great questions
  (physics) and great quests (astronomy)
• The balance is dangerously poor
• Train to be a jaguar and eat up all the hedgehogs
  and outrun the fox

26
Now for something really useful
27
(No Transcript)
28
(No Transcript)
29
The Mother of All Surveys

• All telescopes around the world to observe four
  regions of the sky for an entire year
• The cadence, filter choices etc are designed to
  minimize operating costs
• Resulting survey will serve all areas of
  astronomy (thanks to the diversity of the
  approaches)!