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Crowdsourcing quality control for Dark Energy Survey images
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 04:13 authored by Kathy RomerKathy Romer, et al The Dark Energy SurveyWe have developed a crowdsourcing web application for image quality control employed by the Dark Energy Survey. Dubbed the “DES exposure checker”, it renders science-grade images directly to a web browser and allows users to mark problematic features from a set of predefined classes. Users can also generate custom labels and thus help identify previously unknown problem classes. User reports are fed back to hardware and software experts to help mitigate and eliminate recognized issues. We report on the implementation of the application and our experience with its over 100 users, the majority of which are professional or prospective astronomers but not data management experts. We discuss aspects of user training and engagement, and demonstrate how problem reports have been pivotal to rapidly correct artifacts which would likely have been too subtle or infrequent to be recognized otherwise. We conclude with a number of important lessons learned, suggest possible improvements, and recommend this collective exploratory approach for future astronomical surveys or other extensive data sets with a sufficiently large user base. We also release open-source code of the web application and host an online demo version at http://des-exp-checker.pmelchior.net.
Funding
STFC Consolidated Grant Supplement; G1316; STFC-SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL; ST/M000753/1
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Astronomy and ComputingISSN
2213-1337Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Volume
16Page range
99-108Department affiliated with
- Physics and Astronomy Publications
Research groups affiliated with
- Astronomy Centre Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2016-11-28First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2016-11-25Usage metrics
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