Astrophysics (Index)About

blind survey

(survey conducted independently of prior information)

As near as I can make out blind survey refers to a survey that is not a set of aimed observations of previously known objects (e.g., already-known galaxies, stars, or clouds, etc.), but is attempting to discover unknown sources and/or gather statistics that avoid some of the inevitable bias.

Such a survey often covers a pre-chosen region of the sky, and deep surveys often fit the description. Or it may cover a larger survey field, even to the extent of being labeled all sky, but there are obvious trade-offs regarding angular resolution, signal strength, wavelengths covered, and amount of the celestial sphere covered.

Some surveys termed "blind" aim at a particular volume, e.g., the Milky Way, or a redshift range, and/or aim at a specific phenomena, such as pulsars, or the 21-cm line at different redshifts, e.g., intensity mapping. Some transient surveys have been described as "blind", and the term seems to fit many of them.


(surveys,astronomy)
Further reading:
https://news.utexas.edu/2020/12/02/hetdex-project-on-track-to-probe-dark-energy/
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003MNRAS.346..787M/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011A%26A...534A...7D/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017MNRAS.471.2575S/abstract

Referenced by pages:
Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)
plane of the sky (POS)
stellar designation

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