Publications

This paper documents the DES Data Management (DESDM) data processing pipeline. It describes the image reduction and calibration procedures that are applied to raw DECam data to produce sicence-ready images. DES wide-field survey images are coadded to increase imaging depth, while DES supernova exposures are difference imaged to enable transient source detection. It also describes the procedures for producing catalogs of astronomical objects and auxiliary data products to enable DES science.

This paper describes and presents the first major public release of reduced images and wide-field coadd source catalogs from the first three years of full science operations from the DES survey. This release consists in over 38,000 single exposure images, close to 62,000 coadd images covering 10,338 tiles over roughly 5,000 square degrees within the DES footprint, resulting in nearly 310 million galaxies and 80 million stars cataloged and served from a public database. DES DR1 constitutes the largest photometric data set to date at the achieved depth and photometric precision.

This paper describes the discovery of nearly a dozen new stellar streams in three years of DES data. Stellar streams are the remains of dwarf galaxies and star clusters that have been ripped apart by the gravitational force of the Milky Way. These streams provide important information about the formation history of the Milky Way and can be used to trace the local distribution of dark matter. The unprecedented sensitivity and coverage of three-year DES data set has allowed us to search for fainter and more distant streams than ever before.