Dark Energy Survey Simulations
Abstract
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is a next generation optical imaging survey that will cover 5000 sq. deg. of the southern sky using a new 520 Megapixel CCD camera that will be mounted on the 4m Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The DES will probe dark energy using the 4 complementary techniques of galaxy clusters, weak gravitational lensing, baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia supernovae. In preparation for the survey, we have been carrying out detailed catalog- and image-level simulations of the DES, as part of annual data challenges that use the simulated data to help develop and test our data management pipelines and science analysis codes. Here we will describe our latest round of simulations for DES "Data Challenge 5" (DC5). Our DC5 catalog simulations include: dark matter from a "Carmen" N-body simulation box; a galaxy catalog derived using the "ADDGALS" method; galaxy shapes based on COSMOS data; weak lensing convergence and shear derived from ray tracing, plus stronly-lensed arcs; and stars based the "Trilegal" model of the Milky Way. The simulated galaxy and stellar catalogs are then used to populate simulated DES images, which account for a wide range of instrumental and observational effects due to the telescope and corrector, the CCD detectors, and the atmosphere and weather. Using grid computing resources at Fermilab, some 3.5 TB of simulated DES imaging data have been generated for DC5, covering the 5 DES filters (grizy) over some 200 sq. deg. of sky.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #215
- Pub Date:
- January 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AAS...21547007L