The Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit (CASU) and Edinburgh Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) have been involved in processing and archiving digital wide-field surveys for some time. We intend to use the experience gained from these surveys (eg. APM/SuperCOSMOS surveys, INT WFS and CIRSI survey) to devise pipeline processing schemes, define data products and produce a science archive for all WFCAM data (eg. data from consortium surveys - ie. UKIDSS, PATT and non-PATT programmes).
In addition to generic survey projects we have also developed pipeline processing tools to deal with user data from INGRID and the wide field mosaic optical imagers at the AAO and on the CFHT. We envisage that the tools available within these pipelines will form the basis for data processing all of the WFCAM data. Likewise our current science archiving and provision of user access to a multiplicity of different astronomical datasets will form the basis for the development of the WFCAM science archive, although we intend to base part of the system on the SX software (see later) developed by the SDSS (subject to official agreement).
The end-to-end WFCAM project is overseen by JAC at Hawaii, and in broad outline consists of:
This document is concerned with a top-level specification for pipeline processing, data products and science archiving. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, all technical details, discussion of issues and references is confined to the appendices. Note that it is envisioned that external projects, such as AstroGrid or VISTA, may influence the final design of, and produce enhancements, to the basic specification presented here.