This repo hosts the mock galaxy catalogs used by DESCQA2.

On a NERSC machine, all these catalogs can be directly accessed through the "Generic Catalog Reader" (GCR) inferface. More information about GCR can be found here.

Currently these sets of catalogs are available (Note that these catalogs are not perfect and will continue to be updated):

1. protoDC2: by Eve Kovacs, Danila Korytov, Andrew Benson, Katrin Heitmann et al.

   • protoDC2 (full catalog)

2. Buzzard series: by Joe DeRose, Risa Wechsler, Eli Rykoff et al.

   • buzzard (full catalog, DES Y3 area)
   • buzzard_test (same as buzzard but a small subset for testing purpose)
   • buzzard_high-res (higher resolution, smaller sky area)
   • buzzard_v1.6_1, buzzard_v1.6_2, buzzard_v1.6_3, buzzard_v1.6_5, buzzard_v1.6_21 (different realizations of buzzard)

3. DC1 catalog:

   • dc1

Each of the catalogs is specified by a YAML config file, which can be found here. The galaxy quantities in these catalogs conform to this schema.

Note: These instructions about Python environment may change in the future. If you encounter issues, please check if there's any updates on these instructions.

GCRCatalogs is already installed in the DESCQA Python envoirnment at NERSC. To use it:

First, start a NERSC notebook server and open a notebook with Python 2 kernel. Make sure you add the DESCQA Python enviornment to sys.path:

For Python 3:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/global/common/software/lsst/common/miniconda/py3-4.2.12/lib/python3.6/site-packages')

For Python 2

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/global/common/cori/contrib/lsst/apps/anaconda/py2-envs/DESCQA/lib/python2.7/site-packages')

Activate DESCQA Python environment by running the following on NERSC (needs to be in bash or zsh):

For Python 3:

source /global/common/cori/contrib/lsst/apps/anaconda/4.4.0-py3/bin/activate
source activate DESCQA

For Python 2:

source /global/common/cori/contrib/lsst/apps/anaconda/4.4.0-py2/bin/activate
source activate DESCQA

To be able to import GCRCatalogs, the first line of the script should be:

For Python 3:

#!/global/common/cori/contrib/lsst/apps/anaconda/py3-envs/DESCQA/bin/python 

For Python 2:

#!/global/common/cori/contrib/lsst/apps/anaconda/py2-envs/DESCQA/bin/python 

You can install the latest version by running (but note that you need to change the python paths accordingly)

pip install https://github.com/LSSTDESC/gcr-catalogs/archive/master.zip

But note that the actual catalogs can only be accessed on a NERSC machine.

• See this notebook for a tutorial on how to use GCR Catalogs.

• See this notebook for an actual application (the Conditional Luminosity Function test) using GCR Catalogs. (Thanks to Joe DeRose for providing the CLF test example!)

• See GCR documentation for the complete GCR API.

• See this script for an example of interfacing PhoSim through CatSim using GCR Catalogs.

1. On GitHub fork the GCRCatalogs GitHub repo.

2. On NERSC, clone your fork (you can skip this if you've done it)

   cd /your/own/directory
   git clone git@github.com:YourGitHubUsername/gcr-catalogs.git
   git remote add upstream https://github.com/LSSTDESC/gcr-catalogs.git
   

3. Sync with the upstream master branch

   cd /your/own/directory/gcr-catalogs
   git checkout master
   git pull upstream master
   git push origin master
   

4. Create a new branch for this edit:

   git checkout -b newBranchName
   

5. Make changes

6. Test by adding your clone to the path when running Python:

   import sys
   sys.path.insert(0, '/your/own/directory/gcr-catalogs')

7. Commit and push to your forked repo

   git add <files changed>
   git commit -m <short but meaningful message>
   git push origin newBranchName
   

8. Go to your forked repo's GitHub page and "create a pull request".