APOGEE-centric Ananke Simulations in a SciServer SQL Database

Abstract

Modern galaxy simulations have reached the complexity required to create sophisticated mock catalogs. Ananke is a set of nine mock catalogs constructed from synthetic surveys of three Milky Way-like galaxies from the Latte suite of FIRE simulations. Ananke provides observed quantities for comparison with modern large-scale stellar surveys. In SDSS-IV DR17, mock catalogs for the Apache Point Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) were built from Ananke synthetic surveys as a Value-Added Catalog, but were only provided as large flat files (∼>10's GB). Here we announce an >40 Tb SQL database for nine APOGEE-specific mock catalogs and describe additions to the data model necessary for effective user queries. The catalogs can be accessed on the free, science platform, SciServer—supported by the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science at the Johns Hopkins University (IDIES); SciServer supports server-side analysis with commonly used coding languages and tools.