Next Generation Sky Surveys: Astronomical Opportunities and Computational Challenges

A major trend in observational astronomy is the increasing importance of systematic sky surveys, with a growing fraction of astronomical research being based upon data extracted from the archives they produce rather than data obtained from smaller, specifically-targeted observing programmes. The current generation of sky surveys - most notably the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) - has inspired a number of e-Science projects: astronomers have needed help from computer scientists and software engineers to store, publish, and analyse the multi-TB datasets these surveys have produced, which, conversely, have provided excellent testbeds for people interested in developing scalable computational technologies and techniques for indexing, integrating, and exploring large volumes of data.

The UK astronomical community is now considering plans for its involvement in the next generation of sky survey projects, which could see first light in the period 2015-2020. All have very ambitious science goals, multi-national consortia, large price-tags and peta-scale computational requirements. Assessing what role the UK may take in each of them requires answers to a set of scientific, technical and political questions. These questions are closely related, and a year-long eSI Theme provides the ideal way to address them - taken together, in the depth required, and with the necessary multi-disciplinary input.

The principal outcome of the Theme would be a Road-Map that the community could use as the basis for future funding bids to STFC. This would present a scientific prioritisation of the different surveys, based on a detailed comparison of their capabilities, and would outline a plan for the technical role that the UK can play in each of those in which it is judged it should seek involvement. An important secondary outcome would be the identification of e-Science research topics requiring further study before the next generation sky surveys come online. More concretely, we would hope to publish a journal special issue to collect the contributions to Theme activities: both New Astronomy Reviews (Elsevier) and Astrophysics and and Space Science (Springer) publish conference proceedings as special issues.

Further information will be available on the theme wiki http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/Automated_Experimentation