IV. WISE Data Processing
3. Pipelines
b. The Moving Object Pipeline
The WISE Moving Object Pipeline System (WMOPS) searches for candidate
solar system objects that move between the repeated,
independent observations of the same region of sky that result from the WISE
survey strategy.
WMOPS takes as input the lists of detections and metadata from the individual
Single-exposures that are produced by the Scan/frame
pipeline. Processing runs asynchronously from the
Scan/Frame processing, using the source lists from several days worth
of accumulated scans and frames at once.
The elements of the Moving Object pipeline are shown in
Figure 1 and summarized below. A detailed description of
the WMOPS algorithm is given in IV.5.
- Determine and bookkeep overlapping frames and geometries.
- Filter-out low SNR and suspected artifact detections from the
Single-exposure source lists.
- Identify and reject stationary objects from the source lists by
searching for positional associations between different observation of the
same region.
- Link non-stationary detection pairs from successive single-exposure
source lists.
- Create chains of matched detection pairs to generate candidate
tracklets.
- Perform QA to vet the candidate tracklet list, identifying tracklets
associated with known solar system objects and filtering out
low reliability tracklets via automated parameter filtering and
visual examination.
- Report vetted tracklets to MPC
The Moving Object pipeline produced candidate moving object tracklets
(sets of source time-position pairs) that were reported to the
IAU Minor Planet Center (MPC)
within 10 days of the WISE observations to enable vetting by the MPC and
rapid follow-up for confirmation by ground-based observers.
WMOPS was run in WISE First-pass data
processing during the on-orbit survey phases of the mission.
WMOPS pipeline was not run concurrently with the WISE
Second-pass processing
that produced the All-Sky Release data products. However, WMOPS
will be run on the Single-exposure source lists produced by
the second-pass processing to take advantage of the improvements
to the WSDS, and new tracklet data will be delivered to the
MPC in late 2012.
 |
| Figure 1 - The WSDS Moving Object Pipeline operational flow
diagram |
Last update: 2012 February 4
