Spatial footprint, filter balance, rolling cadence for "Galactic Plane"

This is cool, thanks Will!
My preference would go to solution number 2 (gri-heavy), and I would put Y exposures to 0 and move those 5 o the u filter, so it would become 20 30 29 30 15

I’ve added some trial-balloon “Galactic plane” specifications that we might request, into the shared google doc (this link should take you to the section “Galactic Plane” in that doc). I think this covers most of the options we discussed in the telecon today.

Comments and improvements are most welcome. Hopefully we can get this refined into a set of specification we can sensibly request from Lynne, Peter and the sims team.

@chrisusher @jeffcarlin @knutago @strader @rstreet @rmr @jgizis @calamida @jsobeck

If it’s helpful - note that the “light_roll_v2.99_10yrs” simulation now has a modified SCP and GP filter balance (the footprint is still the same, and I believe needs to cut visits unfortunately).

The SCP filter balance isn’t modified too heavily, but g and I band were increased at the expense of u, r, z, and y (most heavily in y). So it’s a minor modification, but does bring the “LVDwarfs V<0.0 SCP” metric most of the way back towards baseline_v2.2 levels while still maintaining the survey legacy value of covering the SCP in all filters.

The filters balances are modified not as strongly as in your example 1, however.
Please note that 5 visits in y band would mean one visit every two years.

Coverage in all filters has strong merits, but it’s worth noting that the NES does not include u or y band coverage, so it should not really be required. The NES, like the SCP is also beyond the airmass limit that helps define the north and south boundaries of the low-dust WFD region. This means that u band will have particularly worse seeing and correspondingly lower limiting magnitudes, compared to similar visits in the WFD.

Thanks, @ljones - this is very helpful. Am I correct that any spatial selection in the metrics you show above, takes place in the metric itself? (E.g. LV Dwarfs V>0.0 SCP Area is the only one of those metrics that currently assesses the SCP specifically?)

Also I think for @ljones - what might be the best way for us to translate our rough specifications for filter balance and/or footprint into formats that the simulations team can use? Cc’ing @rstreet

Of the SCP scenarios, I favor the gri-heavy option (or perhaps griz-heavy if there are strong arguments for keeping z-band coverage).

In general, yes, that is how we run these metrics (and how they are configured).
The LVDwarfs V>0.0 SCP area metric is relevant to only the SCP as only fields with dec < -60 are included.
You can see more information on the LVDwarfs metric here –

Some other metrics are spatially “aware” because their input population of objects (such as microlenses) is not uniform.

I will go and look at your google doc in some more detail. I think we’ve had some miscommunication in the past regarding how we’d like things to be provided, that is probably easier to clear up if we also know what you’re trying to do.

@willclarkson I had a look at the google doc in some more detail and made a few comments ("–LJ" where they’re inline).

One nice thing though is that we have a simulation or two (the “draft2*v2.99” sims) which come pretty close to matching your first suggestion for GP coverage.
The second thing is that we have also updated the SCP coverage to at least more g band visits, although it doesn’t match your SCP wish list exactly. OTOH, it does bring the LVdwarf metric back to ~ baseline_v2.2 levels.