Archive for ESAC

Euclid Update – Revised Timeline

Posted in Euclid, mathematics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2026 by telescoper

In a post last week I hinted that I hoped soon to be able to provide an update on progress with the European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission. People within the Euclid Consortium have known for some time, but it has now been officially announced by ESA, that the timeline for the first full Data Release (DR1; originally scheduled for October 2026) has now been revised.

The plan now is for DR1 to happen in stages, with a first tranche to occur in November 2026 (precise date yet to be announced). The complete data release will take place in mid-2027 (probably in June). The sky area covered by DR1 will be about covering a large sky area of about 1900 deg².

To give a little more background, the data products from the Euclid survey are divided into three levels of data processing function:

  • LE1 – the “raw” data frames, prior to calibration, generated at the Science Operations Centre from the time-ordered data and telemetry received from the spacecraft
  • LE2 – the calibrated and corrected data for the two instruments (VIS and NISP) – images, spectra, catalogues of point sources, etc
  • LE3 – the high-level data products (galaxy catalogues, cosmic shear maps, etc) designed for cosmological analysis

The first release will comprise LE1 and LE2 only. This will be called DR-Foundation. The LE3 data will be added next year to make the full DR1. Since LE3 is required for the cosmological analysis that is the prime motivation for the Euclid mission, it follows that there will be no official cosmology results from Euclid DR1 until mid-2027 at the earliest. Other results based on “Foundation” data may of course emerge before then.

I hope this clarifies the situation.

P.S. Irish physicists and astronomers will be particularly interested to know that the LE1 data includes information about the spacecraft and instrument pointing orientations, which is stored in the form of quaternions…

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.Astronomy

Posted in Barcelona, Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , on April 24, 2024 by telescoper

So here I am at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) just outside Madrid for a conference called .Astronomy 13. It is (obviously) the thirteenth such conference but the first that I have attended. I’m giving a plenary talk in half-an-hour or so. I travelled from Barcelona by train yesterday evening, which was a comfortable and uneventful trip, the (approximately) 504 km from Barcelona to Madrid Atocha station taking about 2 hours and 30 minutes that cost about 30 euros. I stayed overnight in Madrid and took a shuttle bus from to ESAC. The only glitch in my travels so far was that I got on the Metro Line 6 (the equivalent of the Circle Line), but chose the wrong platform and went the long way round. I still got there in time to get the shuttle.

Incidentally, ESAC hosts the Euclid Science Operations Centre (SOC) which plays a central role in the processing of data from Euclid and is also responsible for the development and operations of the Euclid Archive from which data will be distributed to the global astronomical community.

UPDATE: Back in Barcelona. The return by train was just as smooth an uneventful as the outbound journey, and in fact arrived back about five minutes ahead of schedule. Thanks to the organizers for inviting me – I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for longer as I like the idea of the .Astronomy meetings. Perhaps we should have one in Ireland sometime?

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