Introduction

The Wide Field Astronomy Unit WFAU is part of the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) of the University of Edinburgh. It is housed, like the rest of the IfA, in the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE), which the IfA shares with the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC). WFAU specialises in optical and near-infrared data, reflecting the historical links between the old ROE, the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) and the UK Infared Telescope (UKIRT).

WFAU hosts several exclusive datasets as well as a number of mirrored datasets produced by other facilities. These datsets are acccesible through an online web inferface and also through AstroGrid. The web interface allows users to submit SQL to the database and the AstroGrid access is provided through a DSA which allows cone searches and ADQL queries to be submittedfrom the VO. Most of the datasets are openly available to all users though access to the UKIDSS dataset is restricted and is protected by security measures on both the web interface and through the DSA.

The two databases exclusive to our site are the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey (SSS) and the UKIRT Infared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) database. The mirrored datasets we host are the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) (DR3, DR5), Two Micron All Sky Survey (2mass), Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE), ROSAT Archive, FIRST Survey Catalogue, and IRAS Archive. We will soon be processing and hosting the database resulting from the VISTA project as well.

Archives

Notes on databases

Currently the SSS data are stored in flat files, and the relational database is the SSA. SQLServer 2000 is used by WFAU as the DBMS for all the relational databases on our servers.

-- MarkHolliman - 15 Mar 2007